WeatherBoard

⚠️WeatherBoard is no longer working since the OpenWeatherMap's One Call API 2.5 was discontinued in June 2024.

WeatherBoard is an experimental weather forecast web application written in Python using the Django web framework. AdminLTE and Bootstrap are used in templates. Charts are rendered using the Chart.js library. Icons come from Font Awesome and Bootstrap.

WeatherBoard uses weather and air pollution data from OpenWeatherMap.org and location data from OpenRouteService.org.

If you sign up, WeatherBoard will automatically save every location you visit as long as you stay logged in. WeatherBoard has no direct access to user location. No personal or other data are stored.

Usage

Simply visit jakbude.herokuapp.com

Installation

The result of this installation process will be accessible only on your local computer. Deploying the application to the public internet is out of scope of this document.

1. Obtain free API keys

You need to obtain free API keys to access the following data resources (registration required):

• OpenWeatherMap.org
  • One Call API
  • Air Pollution API
• OpenRouteService.org
  • Geocode API

2. Set up a Python virtual environment

Using a virtual environment is not necessary but highly recommended in order to keep WeatherBoard dependencies isolated from the rest of your system. Python is required, recommended version 3.9.9.

Create virtual environment. On Linux/MacOS type python3 instead of python.

python -m venv weatherboard_env

Activate virtual environment.

./weatherboard_env/Scripts/activate

Since now you should see (weatherboard_env) in the beginning of command prompt.

The virtual environment directory should be located outside of the WeatherBoard project directory and should be excluded from versioning (.gitignore).

3. Download WeatherBoard repository

Using Git is not necessary but recommended.

git clone https://github.com/rvdvorak/weather_board.git

Alternatively you can download the repository as a .zip archive.

4. Install dependencies

Set working directory to WeatherBoard project root directory:

cd weather_board

Install WeatherBoard dependencies. This may take a while. On Linux/MacOS type pip3 instead of pip.

pip install -r ./requirements.txt

You should see quite long output similar to this:

...
...
...
Successfully installed Django-3.2.5 Pillow-8.3.1 asgiref-3.4.1 astroid-2.6.2 autopep8-1.5.7 backports.entry-points-selectable-1.1.0 certifi-2021.5.30 charset-normalizer-2.0.4 colorama-0.4.4 coverage-6.1.2 distlib-0.3.3 dj-database-url-0.5.0 django-appconf-1.0.4 django-compressor-2.4.1 django-heroku-0.3.1 django-sass-processor-1.0.1 filelock-3.3.1 gunicorn-20.1.0 idna-3.2 isort-5.9.2 lazy-object-proxy-1.6.0 libsass-0.21.0 mccabe-0.6.1 mypy-0.910 mypy-extensions-0.4.3 platformdirs-2.4.0 psycopg2-2.9.2 psycopg2-binary-2.9.2 pycodestyle-2.7.0 pylint-2.9.3 python-dotenv-0.19.2 pytz-2021.1 rcssmin-1.0.6 requests-2.26.0 rjsmin-1.1.0 six-1.16.0 sqlparse-0.4.1 toml-0.10.2 typing-extensions-3.10.0.0 urllib3-1.26.6 virtualenv-20.8.1 whitenoise-5.3.0 wrapt-1.12.1
WARNING: You are using pip version 21.2.4; however, version 21.3.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the 'C:\DEV\test_weather_board\weatherboard_env\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip' command.

5. Set up environment variables

Create a file named .env (no extension) in the WeatherBoard project root directory with the following contents:

OWM_KEY=********
ORS_KEY=********
DJANGO_KEY=********
DJANGO_DEBUG=True
FORCE_HTTPS=False

• Replace the ******** by the appropriate keys (do NOT use any quotation marks):
  • OWM_KEY stands for OpenVeatherMap.org API key.
  • ORS_KEY stands for OpenRouteService.org API key.
  • DJANGO_KEY should be 50 characters long (no whitespaces) randomly generated string kept in secret.
• DJANGO_DEBUG shows usefull informations for debugging. In production must be False, otherwise you may expose sensitive informations to hackers.
• FORCE_HTTPS redirects all HTTP requests to secure HTTPS connection. This must be False on local computer. HTTPS will not work on development server.

IMPORTANT:

The file .env contains secret keys. Therefore it must be always excluded from publicly available repositories (.gitignore).

6. Setup the database

Set working directory to weather_board/weather_project/.

cd weather_project

Run migrations.

python manage.py migrate

You should see output similar to this:

Operations to perform:
  Apply all migrations: admin, auth, contenttypes, sessions, weather_app
Running migrations:
  Applying contenttypes.0001_initial... OK
  Applying auth.0001_initial... OK
  Applying admin.0001_initial... OK
  Applying admin.0002_logentry_remove_auto_add... OK
  Applying admin.0003_logentry_add_action_flag_choices... OK
  Applying contenttypes.0002_remove_content_type_name... OK
  Applying auth.0002_alter_permission_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0003_alter_user_email_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0004_alter_user_username_opts... OK
  Applying auth.0005_alter_user_last_login_null... OK
  Applying auth.0006_require_contenttypes_0002... OK
  Applying auth.0007_alter_validators_add_error_messages... OK
  Applying auth.0008_alter_user_username_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0009_alter_user_last_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0010_alter_group_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0011_update_proxy_permissions... OK
  Applying auth.0012_alter_user_first_name_max_length... OK
  Applying sessions.0001_initial... OK
  Applying weather_app.0001_initial... OK
  Applying weather_app.0002_auto_20210923_1939... OK
  Applying weather_app.0003_auto_20211003_2259... OK
  Applying weather_app.0004_rename_favorite_location_is_favorite... OK
  Applying weather_app.0005_alter_location_label... OK
  Applying weather_app.0006_auto_20211114_0933... OK

7. Run tests

Make sure your working directory is set to weather_board/weather_project/.

Run tests.

coverage run manage.py test

All tests should pass OK. You should see output similar to this:

Creating test database for alias 'default'...
System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
...C:\DEV\test_weather_board\weatherboard_env\lib\site-packages\whitenoise\base.py:115: UserWarning: No directory at: C:\DEV\test_weather_board\weather_board\weather_project\staticfiles\
  warnings.warn(u"No directory at: {}".format(root))
.....................................................
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 56 tests in 26.935s

OK
Destroying test database for alias 'default'...

Furthermore you may check the coverage by tests.

coverage report

8. Run the application (on your local computer)

Make sure your working directory is set to weather_board/weather_project/.

Run Django development server locally.

python manage.py runserver

You should see output similar to this:

Watching for file changes with StatReloader
Performing system checks...

System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
December 15, 2021 - 20:04:15
Django version 3.2.5, using settings 'weather.settings'
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CTRL-BREAK.

Now you should be able to open the WeatherBoard application in your web browser by following the URL printed out in the last screen (Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/). The actual URL may be different on your computer.

License

WeatherBoard is an open-source project provided under the MIT License.