# Current Temperature (#68)

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/current-temperature-68/75688>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 2, 2006, 2:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/current-temperature-68/75688 "2006-03-02T14:58:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bbazzarrakk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/47e85d/32.png) [@bbazzarrakk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bbazzarrakk)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 2:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/current-temperature-68/75688/1 "2006-03-02T14:58:10Z")

</div>

Obviously, this quiz is about fetching data from the Internet. People  
went  
about this in two different ways. The most popular solution was to  
“scrape” the  
answer from popular Internet weather sites. Here is one such solution  
from  
David T.:

```
require 'uri'
require 'open-uri'
require 'rexml/document'

class Weather
  attr_reader :location, :temperature, :unit

  def initialize(zip_or_city, unit='f')
    raise "Error: Unit must be 'C' or 'F'." unless unit =~ /^[cf]$/i
    id = get_id(zip_or_city)
    url = "http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/" +
          "forecastrss/#{id}_#{unit.downcase}.xml"
    xml = open(url) { |f| f.read }
    doc = REXML::Document.new(xml)
    @temperature = 

```

doc.elements[’/rss/channel/item/yweather:condition/@temp’].  
to\_s.to\_i  
@unit = unit.upcase  
end

```
  private
  def get_id(location)
    location = URI.escape(location)
    url = "http://xoap.weather.com/search/search?where=#{location}"
    xml = open(url) { |f| f.read }
    doc = REXML::Document.new(xml)
    locations = doc.elements.to_a("/search/loc")
    raise "Cannot find the location." if locations.size <= 0
    @location = locations[0].text.sub(/\s*\(\d+\)\s*$/, '')
    locations[0].attributes['id']
  end
end

if __FILE__ == $0
  if ARGV.size <= 0 || (ARGV[1] && ARGV[1] !~ /^[cf]$/i)
    puts "Usage: #$0 city_or_zip_code [c|f]"
    exit(1)
  end

  begin
    w = Weather.new(ARGV[0], ARGV[1] || 'f')
    puts "The temperature in #{w.location} is " +
         "#{w.temperature} degress #{w.unit}."
  rescue
    puts "Information for #{ARGV[0]} was not found or unavailable."
  end
end

```

Start at the bottom if statement. You can see in here that arguments  
are  
checked and a usage statement is printed, if needed. Next we can see  
that a  
Weather object is constructed and the temperature information is pulled  
from its  
methods. If anything goes wrong in this process, the rescue clause  
prints a  
suitable error message.

Now we need to check out the Weather object.

In initialize(), the zip\_or\_city is somehow turned into an “id”. Using  
that id,  
a url is constructed for an RSS feed of weather information for the  
location.  
Next the terrific open-uri library is used to slurp the feed, just as we  
would a  
normal file. The xml is then dropped into Ruby’s standard REXML library  
and an  
XPath statement is used to extract the temperature from the feed.

The other method is the magic “id” conversion I mentioned earlier. It  
really  
works pretty similar to the method we just examined. Again a url is  
constructed, the page slurped, the xml handed to REXML, and XPath used  
to find a  
matching location that was listed on the page. This time a Regexp is  
also  
needed to clean up the location name.

Unfortunately, scraping has some down sides. First, this use of REXML  
and  
Regexps to grab the information is pretty fragile. As soon as these  
pages  
change in some way the author didn’t expect, the application is broken  
and will  
need maintenance.

The other big problem with scraping is legal issues. Many sites do not  
allow  
access to their content like this (because it bypasses their ads).  
Google is a  
famous example of a company that does not allow scraping content. Be  
sure you  
check the usage policies of a site before you construct or use software  
like  
this.

If you want to get around these issues, you can use a web service. Web  
services  
represent a predefined communication protocol. You pass the information  
the  
service expects in, and it will return a promised response. Here’s a  
temperature solution using a web service by Rudolfs O.:

```
#!/usr/local/bin/ruby
require 'soap/wsdlDriver'
require 'rexml/document'

URL = 'http://www.webservicex.net/globalweather.asmx?WSDL'

# process the comandline arguments
if ARGV[0] == nil
  abort("Usage: weather.rb city")
else
  city = ARGV.join(' ')
end

soap = SOAP::WSDLDriverFactory.new(URL).create_rpc_driver
begin
  weather = soap.GetWeather(:CityName => city, :CountryName => "")

  # strip the first line with <? ?> stuff, else REXML wont parse
  xml = weather.getWeatherResult.gsub(/(<\?.*?>\n)/, '')
  data = REXML::Document.new(xml)

  # celsius degrees are in parentheses
  data.elements["//Temperature"].text[/\((.*)\)/]; temp = $1
  data.elements["//Location"].text[/^(.*),/]; loc = $1

  # show the gathered data
  puts "The temperature in " + loc + " is " + temp
rescue
  puts "Could not find data for your supplied city: " + city
end

```

Here again, we see that a URL is built, but this time the URL points to  
the  
document describing the web service (a Web Service Description Language,  
or  
WSDL, document). Another standard library, SOAP, is used to read and  
parse that  
document. In doing so, it will build a custom object that has the  
methods  
provided by the service, accepting the arguments they expect.

The rest of the solution will look pretty familiar, since this service  
provides  
an xml answer. Again REXML is used, with XPath, to find the data we are  
interested in and again Regexps are used to clean it up for display. In  
this  
case we didn’t get too far away from the fragile scraping technique it  
seems,  
though web services typically see less change than web pages.

Not that the above solution doesn’t work with zip codes, because the  
service  
expects a city name. Supporting a zip code might be possible using  
another  
service to lookup the city name, if one could be found.

My thanks to all the submitters for another great quiz. Pulling  
information  
from the web is pretty common and these guys did a great job of showing  
off how  
painless it can be.

Tomorrow’s quiz is an easy, but unique, problem. If you have yet to  
complete a  
quiz solution, this one is for you…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bbazzarrakk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/47e85d/32.png) [@bbazzarrakk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bbazzarrakk)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 3:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/current-temperature-68/75688/2 "2006-03-02T15:14:52Z")

</div>

Rudolfs O. solution is very sound and using a web-service is a good  
decision for the reasons James mentioned. Bravo.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bbazzarrakk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/47e85d/32.png) [@bbazzarrakk](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bbazzarrakk)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2006, 11:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/current-temperature-68/75688/3 "2006-03-02T23:20:41Z")

</div>

“Uncle D” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) writes:

> Rudolfs O. solution is very sound and using a web-service is a good  
> decision for the reasons James mentioned. Bravo.

Yet is the web-service used total crap. You should not be forced  
to hack out XML declarations in real life.