Updates at the website

[Martin G. <gim...@gi...>]

Hi all,

There's now data available at SourceForge, have a look for yourself:

  http://phpweather.sourceforge.net/phpweather/index.php

The data comes from the cycle-files produced by the NWS:

  http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/metar.shtml#files

Each file contains the data for the corresponding cycle, and a cycle
is from x:45 to (x+1):44.

The difficult thing is to update the database at the right time. I've
set up a cronjob at SourceForge that updates it 11, 24, and 52
minutes past each hour. The check at 11 minutes past catches most
stations. Some stations make two reports each hour, (say at 50 and 20)
so we check again at 24 minutes past to catch those as well.

The last check is an attempt to catch the rest. It might be
unnecessary.

We might have to process the old cycle files one more time. The data
is appended to the files as it is received. So, if a report is
inserted into a file that's older than one hour, then we wont see it.
I don't know how often this happens...

=2D-=20
Martin Geisler                       My GnuPG Key: 0xF7F6B57B

See my homepage at http://www.gimpster.com/ for:
PHP Weather =3D> Shows the current weather on your webpage.
PHP Shell   =3D> A telnet-connection (almost :-) in a PHP page.