(jcwren) RE: Oblivious?

[jcwren]

I vote this ++ simply because it helps avoid leaving the keyboard to check for such things.

More XP if you can come up with scripts for tornadoes within 50 miles of my location, polar ice cap melting, impending meteor strikes, and hordes of locusts.

--Chris

[Odud]

Another good thing is get a weather report from your local airport (METAR format, there is a module on CPAN to help with the decoding), this can save a lot of wasted time looking out of the window etc.

[ase]

To that effect I submit the following:
Requires: Geo::METAR


#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# Gets METAR information from my Favorite Airports and
#  displays temp and wind speed direction. 

use LWP::UserAgent;
use Geo::METAR;
use strict;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;   
my $uri = "http://weather.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/mgetmetar.pl?cccc=";
my $m = new Geo::METAR;        

#airport codes
my %code = (
    Renton       => 'krnt',
    Ephrata      => 'keph',
    Boeing_Field => 'kbfi',
    CourDAlene   => 'kcoe',
    Sea_Tac      => 'ksea',
    );

my (%site,$key,$value);
while (($key,$value) = each %code) {
  $site{$value}=$key;
}

for (keys %code) {
  $uri .= $code{$_} . "%20";
}

my $req = HTTP::Request->new('GET',$uri);
my $res = $ua->request($req);

if ($res->is_success) {
  my @content = split("\n",$res->content);
  if (@content) {
    for (@content) {
      if (/\d{6}Z/) {
        $m->metar($_);
        print <<"EOT";
Site: $site{lc($m->{SITE})}
Time: $m->{TIME}
Temp: $m->{F_TEMP} deg F.
Wind: $m->{WIND_MPH} mph.
Dir: $m->{WIND_DIR_ENG}

EOT
      }
    }
  }
} else {
    print "Error: " . $res->status_line . "\n";
}

Update: Per Odud's excellent suggestion, I added error checking on the get. This meant usingLWP::UserAgent rather than LWP::Simple

[Odud]

The only suggestion I would make is to improve the error handling around the get. I had occasional timeouts when I tried it that didn't get reported back. Geo::METAR has problems with some of the UK data, for example, visibility is reported as a four digit number in meters rather than statute miles. But nothing that a quick hack around the code can't fix.