Viewing the weather in a terminal has never been so much fun.
If you haven't noticed, PyWeather is in beta. At this point, essential features mostly work.
However, newer or more complex features may not work as expected. It's also up to you to report bugs that you find, as it makes every new PyWeather release better.
HTTP/HTTPS versions notice
Due to a Geopy issue on Mac OS X, there is a standard release of 0.6.1 beta, and a HTTPS release of 0.6.1 beta, the only change being which scheme the geocoder uses. It's highly recommended to use the HTTPS-enabled build, but if you're running Mac OS X, or run into geocoder issues during setup (given a valid internet connection), you'll need to use the HTTP-enabled build.
You can download PyWeather by visiting the releases tab, and getting the latest zip.
You can also use git to download PyWeather, using the commands below.
git clone https://github.com/o355/pyweather.git
<please perform the checkout command once, depending on the version you intend to use>
git checkout 0.6.1-beta-https (HTTPS version)
git checkout 0.6.1-beta (non-HTTPS version)
If you'd prefer to live on the bleeding edge of PyWeather updates, run these commands.
git clone https://github.com/o355/pyweather.git
(please note: indev code is subject to work on some nights, and not on other nights. indev code is also indev code, so there will be bugs!)
After that, run setup.py, and the setup file will guide you through setting up PyWeather. After that, run pyweather.py, and enjoy the magic of PyWeather! It's as easy as that.
PyWeather is a Python script that fetches the weather using Wunderground's API. I made PyWeather as a solution to a few things:
- The lack of script-based weather software that was coded in Python, and that relied on a decent enough API
- The long loading times (and loads of tracking/adverts) when visiting normal weather websites
- Having the ability to check my weather in a terminal.
As such, PyWeather was born. After 30,000 lines of code removed and added by 3 people, all this hard work turned into this.
PyWeather has lots of them, and the list is ever expanding. Here's the present feature list:
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Easy setups. The one-run setup script will install necessary libraries (only two (three on some setups) extra libraries are required to run PyWeather), guide you through obtaining an API key easily, and letting you configure PyWeather to your liking.
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On the subject of API keys, PyWeather uses Wunderground's API, meaning you'll get accurate weather information. I find Wunderground to be the perfect API for this project, as it has accurate weather information, and has a free developer tier.
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PyWeather can be configured easily, and has lots of options to configure. You can fine tune nearly 25 variables of how PyWeather works, across different scripts. The config file being used is a .ini file, and a descriptive configuration readme is also provided.
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PyWeather is simple to use. I've tried to make PyWeather appeal to both people who don't know what Python is, to people who know how to use software. Either way, you can use PyWeather easily.
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Lots of data types. As of PyWeather 0.6 beta, these data types can be viewed:
- Current information
- Alerts information (US/EU only due to Wunderground's API limits)
- 36-hour and 10-day hourly forecasts
- 10-day forecasts
- Almanac information
- Astronomy (sunrise/sunset/moonrise/moonset + moon) information
- Historical weather information, including hourly weather for a historical date
- Radar information (experimental, for now)
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In addition, you'll soon be able to view these data types soon:
- Yesterday's weather - Coming in 0.6.2 beta
- Tide data - Coming in 0.6.2 beta
- Hurricane data - Coming in 0.6.2 beta
- Webcam images (a big maybe on animated videos) - Coming in 0.7 beta
- Some form of a historical planner - Coming in 0.7 beta, or 0.7.1 beta
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PyWeather is pretty modular. As I said earlier with the super-configurable config file, this also translates into modularity. PyWeather's features can be turned on and off at will.
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PyWeather has a built-in updater, provided you have git installed. I hope to eventually incorporate a universal "download the zip and unzip it" system down the road.
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PyWeather has a robust built-in debugger/logger. When turned on, it'll spam your console with verbosityness, or whatever that's called.
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PyWeather has colors. I made the program colorful.
In addition, these features will soon be coming to PyWeather:
- PyWeather will soon be able to get weather for your current location, as would be provided by an IP Geolocator. It will be inaccurate on cellular connections, but should be of good accuracy otherwise - Coming in 0.7.2 beta
- PyWeather will soon be able to get weather from individual personal weather stations. - Coming in 0.7.3 beta
- PyWeather MAY soon be able to get weather easily for your favorite locations. I'm not 100% sure about how I would go about doing this. - 50% chance of this coming in 0.8 beta.
PyWeather has lots of advantages over using websites on your desktop, or even weather apps on mobile (PyWeather is compatible with Termux for Android, and other SSH apps of course)
On a desktop:
- If you have a desktop shortcut to the homepage of wunderground.com, or weather.com, PyWeather (given a shortcut on your desktop) can be faster than visiting Wunderground, and much faster than visiting weather.com
- PyWeather has no ads (or annoying articles), so you get distraction-free weather.
- PyWeather has the essential features other sites have, and more features are coming in future versions.
- PyWeather "gets to the point". It just shows you the weather, nothing else.
On a phone:
- PyWeather when paired with Termux, or an SSH client uses A LOT less battery (my GS7 reported Wunderground's app using 4% of battery power/hour!)
- PyWeather can easily save mobile data with default settings versus other weather apps, since ads aren't being loaded. If you more carefully tune PyWeather's settings, you can save even more data.
- PyWeather may be slower than opening apps, and having direct access (Termux users, if you pay $1.99 for the widgets, it begins to compete with weather apps, and will get better with favorite locations in 0.9 beta) to the weather, but PyWeather fetches data that most apps don't include (like the almanac, yesterday's weather, etc)
Other advantages:
- PyWeather is open-source, and uses completely open-source libraries, AND PyWeather is licensed under GNU's GPL v3 license! Richard Stallman would approve.
- You'll look cool being that one person using a terminal to check your weather like it's the 80s.
PyWeather is presently in a rapid-development beta.
Until the end of 2017, I expect to continue adding new features to PyWeather at a rapid pace. Until this point, I'll be attempting to use every part of Wunderground's API, and implement it into PyWeather.
Since I don't have all the time in the world to work on PyWeather, contributing is a great way to help with PyWeather.
Bug reports, pull requests, feature suggestions, all that fun stuff can help me out with my limited time I have to code PyWeather. Read over CONTRIBUTING.md in the .github folder, to see how things work.
From time-to-time, I'll release development news on how PyWeather is coming along on my website, here: https://owenthe.ninja/category/pyweather-news/
You'll find news on how new versions of PyWeather are coming along, among other things. It's the best way to stay updated on what's going on with PyWeather.
I've, among others have poured in hundreds of hours into making PyWeather what it is, and I plan to spend hundreds of more hours refining PyWeather.
If you'd like, please consider telling your friends, social media followers, whomever about PyWeather. It'll only motivate me more to keep working on PyWeather.