Beta test: AJAX/PHP Saratoga templates for VWS, Cumulus, WeatherLink, WD

[saratogaWX]

Well, it's time to allow some brave folks to try out the new template sets while I'm very busy with the detailed documentation for the new sets.  

NOTE: the base packages include region-specific support scripts and may interfere with existing scripts of the same name.  If you'd not customized the support scripts on your current website, then replacing them with the updated versions included in the base packages shouldn't be an issue as the updated scripts are downward compatible (run with/without a template set).

Here's the general guide to install on your PHP5 website:

1) choose a base package as determined by your station location in the world.  
Download one of:

  Canada
  USA
  World

base templates and unzip (preserving folder structure) to a directory on your PC used for your website maintenance.

2) choose a plugin corresponding to your weather station software you wish to use with the template.
download one of the following:

   Cumulus
   VWS
   WeatherLink
   Weather-Display

and unzip  (preserving folder structure) to the same directory you used with the template from (1) above.

3) if you don't already have the Carterlake forecast icons installed in a forecast/images directory, then
download the Carterlake icons, and unzip  (preserving folder structure) to the same folder with your template from (1) above.

4) now edit the Settings.php file and make changes to the settings using the comments in the file as a guide.  If you don't change
the settings there, it will show my defaults for my station.  Save that file.
New: you may also have to edit the ajaxXX.wx.js file for your software to set the location of your realtime file, and possibly change
settings in the JavaScript for your selected units to match those selected in the Settings.php file.

5) now edit the Settings-weather.php file and make changes to the settings using the comments in the file as a guide.  If you
don't change settings there, it will use the defaults for my station.  My defaults assume you have all the weather software uploads
to the same directory as the template set.  Save that file.

6) configure your weather software to upload the necessary weather tags file(s) found in the WXtags-template-files/ directory.
Use the README.txt file in that directory as a guide to the setup of the weather software.

7) now use FTP to upload the entire site to your website, including all subdirectories in the templates.  Make sure your FTP
client uses ASCII for all the .js, .php, .txt, .html files and Binary for the images.

Do let me know which Base and WX-Plugin you are trying, and if you experience issues with the template set (or post a reply on this thread).  Meanwhile, I'll be doing documentation for the main release

Best regards,
Ken

Edit: corrected link for Base-World.zip package
Edit: added note about possible edit of the AJAX script for the selected software.

[W3DRM]

Hi Ken,

Have DL'd the files. Want to look them over before I start the actual installation. Hope to be ready to start install and testing later this evening.

[saratogaWX]

Wow!  Steve (creator of Cumulus) is also trying out the beta based on a posting on the Cumulus forum
It's great when a weather software developer is willing to play too

Let me know how your testing goes Don!

Meanwhile, I'm writing up the docs (hope to have them finished by late Saturday).

Best regards,
Ken

[ke9lz]

Hi Ken,

This is something that I have been wanting for my VWS site for a long time.  I have it up and running and in the process of debugging and found a reference of VWS-trends-inc.php in the Settings-weather.php.  Should we have this file to make things work?  I couldn't find it in any of the downloads.  Thanks for all your time and effort into this!  It's going to be cool to use these templates with VWS.

Steve

[Mark / Ohio]

As time permits I will be playing along too Ken.  First with VWS and I might also put up WeatherLink as well.   

[saratogaWX]

Hi Ken,

This is something that I have been wanting for my VWS site for a long time.  I have it up and running and in the process of debugging and found a reference of VWS-trends-inc.php in the Settings-weather.php.  Should we have this file to make things work?  I couldn't find it in any of the downloads.  Thanks for all your time and effort into this!  It's going to be cool to use these templates with VWS.

Steve

Hi Steve,
Thanks for trying the beta with (I'm supposing the Base-USA and VWS-plugin combo).
The VWS-trends-inc.php page wasn't released with this beta because it needed massive refitting to compensate for all the tags that VWS doesn't supply .. You can see a trial whack at the page by looking at
http://saratoga-weather.org/wxtemplates/Test/wxtrends.php?wx=VWS

I'll work more on that page as time permits.  I have no hopes at present for a similar page for Cumulus or WeatherLink .. they have very few tags applying to trend information (just day, month, year values for most, and that doesn't make a 'trend').

The menu system automatically excludes a wxtrends link unless the software is WD

Let me know if you uncover issues .. I'll add your site to a new list of websites using the template set

Best regards,
Ken

[saratogaWX]

As time permits I will be playing along too Ken.  First with VWS and I might also put up WeatherLink as well.   

Great, Mark!  Please do let me know about any issues you find

Best regards,
Ken

[ke9lz]

Hi Ken,
Yes, I am using the Base-USA and VWS-plugin combo.  Ok, I figured since it was beta that not all would be working .  I have it up testing at http://weather.athelstanewi.com/wxindex.php and is close to being configured.  I am still trying to figure out why it isn't updating on it's own yet but other than that it seems to be playing. 

Steve

[W3DRM]

Hi Ken,

Have installed the Base-USA and VWS files. Have a long way to go but at least things seem to be going quite smoothly once I realized there was a "wxindex.php" file to kick things off with. I wasn't aware of that particular file. 

I will work more on this tomorrow and get the NOAA and other pieces tested. One thing I want to change is the contact us section. I really like the features of CAPTCHA rather than having my email address visible for all to see. I use it on several other sites I manage and it works great.

• http://carsonvalleyweather.com/test/wxindex.php

Thanks again for a great effort!! 

[sam2004gp]

When someone gets the USA-VWS-Beta up and running on their site, let me know.  I think I am ready for a major overhaul of my site as well.  

Also the only "local" software that I have is VWS 13.01p and Fling.  My webhost does support PHP 5.  

Can I implement the "new beta site" with just those tools?

[nitrx]

Ken it seems to work fine (I've not completed it) but there are some issues, for some reason the graphs are not showing up the source gives an extra dot for the image url ergo :

Code:

<img src="./images/.temp.png" alt="Temperature" width="620" height="248" />

http://www.apeldoorn.tk/weer/wxindex.php , and the updated date stays on 28/12/1999 , My default settings in cumulus is 28-01-11 (dd-mm-yy) so I've dashes in my realtimetxt...this is a Dutch date notation. The values are only  whole units I think this is strange I'd like to see decimals..

The wxindex.php is a little tricky and the link in de header.php links to index.php so this gives a page not found error.

Futher my windspeed is m/s , do I've to change the km/h in the files by myself in m/s ? Sorry for my English , thanks for your efforts I really like the template for the Cumulus software.

[n3ouc]

Hi Ken,
I have it up and running with the vws templates. I do have a couple of issues. #1, i cannot get it to update with ajax. It just updates on the five minute intervals that the template is uploaded on the website. I also cannot get tge GRlevelx maps to show up on the flyout menu. Other than that It is working very well. Here is the link to the site..

http://macungieweather.net/a/wxindex.php
Mike

[saratogaWX]

When someone gets the USA-VWS-Beta up and running on their site, let me know.  I think I am ready for a major overhaul of my site as well.   

Also the only "local" software that I have is VWS 13.01p and Fling.  My webhost does support PHP 5. 

Can I implement the "new beta site" with just those tools?

Sure.. It's possible that some tags in V14.00 didn't exist in V13.00, but you can try it out with no harm .. let me know if something that you think should be displayed seems to be missing.  You can use Fling to upload your wflash.txt/wflash2.txt files also (although the web-based update is a bit more efficient).  And.. the use of AJAX is strictly optional

Let me know how it goes...
Best regards,
Ken

[saratogaWX]

Ken it seems to work fine (I've not completed it) but there are some issues, for some reason the graphs are not showing up the source gives an extra dot for the image url ergo :

Code:

<img src="./images/.temp.png" alt="Temperature" width="620" height="248" />

http://www.apeldoorn.tk/weer/wxindex.php , and the updated date stays on 28/12/1999 , My default settings in cumulus is 28-01-11 (dd-mm-yy) so I've dashes in my realtimetxt...this is a Dutch date notation. The values are only  whole units I think this is strange I'd like to see decimals..

The wxindex.php is a little tricky and the link in de header.php links to index.php so this gives a page not found error.

Futher my windspeed is m/s , do I've to change the km/h in the files by myself in m/s ? Sorry for my English , thanks for your efforts I really like the template for the Cumulus software.

Oops   .. that was my bad..  Edit the wxgraphs.php page and change

Code:

print "<img src=\"$graphImageDir.$imagename\" alt=\"$alttext\" width=\"$width\" height=\"$height\" />\n";

to

Code:

print "<img src=\"$graphImageDir$imagename\" alt=\"$alttext\" width=\"$width\" height=\"$height\" />\n";

and that should fix it.  I've updated the Base distributions with that change.  Also updated the Settings.php in the Base-World set .. I had inadvertently left it setup for English units.

For the wind-speed change, you will need to do it in two places:
1) change the wind UOM in Settings.php (replacing the kmh default)
2) change the ajaxCUwx.js JavaScript to enable wind display in m/s

Hope this helps...

Best regards,
Ken

[W3DRM]

Good morning folks...

Running with Base-USA and VWS:

My AJAX updates seem to be running as I see it updating every 10 seconds.

I do notice in the Local Radar to have a problem relative to my location. It appears that I live in California and shows "Minden" in the SF Bay area. I see Mike's site is also showing Trexlertown to be in several different locations around the country. Looks like there is another variable that needs to be tweaked.

Am getting ready to move all of my code to the root of the server rather than in the /test directory.

[nitrx]

Ken the graphs are fixed and the units for windspeed but I can't get decimal values it's rounded to a whole value by example -1.2 will be -1 ( the cause could be that the notation here is with a comma ( -1.2 is -1,2 In my cumulus software. The realtime.txt doesn't use a comma http://www.apeldoorn.tk/weer/realtime.txt

The update year stays 1999  28-12-1999 = 28 december 1999 I hope this can be solved.

TIA
Ron

http://www.apeldoorn.tk/weer/wxindex.php

[n3ouc]

Hi Don,
May I ask what your setting looks like for this in the settings-weather php file?
$SITE['wflashdir']      = './';  // relative directory for WeatherFlash wflash.txt and wflash2.txt files

Above is what I am using and so far it has been a no go for the wflash.txt files to update. Yet if I change the above at all, I lose the thermometer on the main page....

Thank You,
Mike

[W3DRM]

Mike,

It has been so long since I activated wxflash that I can't remember all of the details of what to do. However, I did look at VWS settings via the Internet | Weather Flash menu item. Here is what those settings are:

USERID = DEMO
Timer = 10.00 (seconds)

Active Server Page
- Activate is checked

The Active Serve Page is:
http://www.carsonvalleyweather.com/scripts/wxflcvwx.php?

Looking at the contents of the wxflcwx.php file it shows the following:

<?php
header("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Expires: Mon,26 JUL 1997 05:00:00 GMT");

if ($HTTP_GET_VARS["I"]=="DEMO" ){
   if ($HTTP_GET_VARS["F"] != ""){
      $fp=fopen("../wflash/Data/wflash.txt", "w");
      $TempStr=$HTTP_GET_VARS["F"];
      $TempStr2=str_replace(" ","+",$TempStr);
      fwrite($fp, "F=".$TempStr2);
   }else{
      $fp=fopen("../wflash/Data/wflash2.txt", "w");
      $TempStr=$HTTP_GET_VARS["S"];
      $TempStr2=str_replace(" ","+",$TempStr);   
      fwrite($fp, "S=".$TempStr2);
   }
   fclose($fp);
}
?>

NOTE: The wflash.txt and wflash2.txt files are located in the /wflash/data folder off of the root on the server.

Hope this helps you.

[saratogaWX]

Good morning folks...

Running with Base-USA and VWS:

My AJAX updates seem to be running as I see it updating every 10 seconds.

I do notice in the Local Radar to have a problem relative to my location. It appears that I live in California and shows "Minden" in the SF Bay area. I see Mike's site is also showing Trexlertown to be in several different locations around the country. Looks like there is another variable that needs to be tweaked.

Am getting ready to move all of my code to the root of the server rather than in the /test directory.

Nice, Don

For the Base-USA template, the local radar page is the WU-radar-inc.php page.

To change it's settings, you'll need to follow the procedure at http://saratoga-weather.org/scripts-WUradar.php#WUradar to use WU-radar-testpage.php?show=loc for setup while editing WU-radar-inc.php .. that will allow you to set the metro and city maps, and position the red dots over your city on the nine different maps.

Let me know when you move it to the document root .. I'll add your site to the (growing) list of websites

Best regards,
Ken

[saratogaWX]

Hi Don,
May I ask what your setting looks like for this in the settings-weather php file?
$SITE['wflashdir']      = './';  // relative directory for WeatherFlash wflash.txt and wflash2.txt files

Above is what I am using and so far it has been a no go for the wflash.txt files to update. Yet if I change the above at all, I lose the thermometer on the main page....

Thank You,
Mike

Hi Mike,

Usually, WeatherFlash is installed in a subdirectory off the document root that looks like:

wflash/Data/wflash.txt
wflash/Data/wflash2.txt
wflash/Config/Units.txt
wflash/scripts/submit.php

The $SITE['wflashdir'] should be set to './wflash/Data/' IF the wflash directory is a subdirectory of the directory the template is in.  If you installed the template in a subdirectory so your setup looks like:

/wflash
/test/wxindex.php

then the setting should be to '../wflash/Data/'  (which says go up one directory, then down to the wflash/Data directory to find the wflash.txt file

Remember to use relative file addressing in all the PHP Settings.php entries which require files and/or directories.

Hope this helps...

Best regards,
Ken

[W3DRM]

Progress is always good and I "think" I'm making progres on the beta testing.

Have moved everything to the root on the server and it appears to be working pretty good. Still have many broken/missing files but getting to them one at a time.

Am working on the Almanac | Station Graphs section at the moment (easy stuff first) 

The default wxgraphs.php file is looking for some standard vws created graph files that you may or may not have activated on your VWS site. I had several missing. I would suggest looking directly at the wxgraphs.php file to get a listing of all of the files/filenames you will need to turn-on so they show up on the Almanac|Station Graphs webpage. My Wind Strip Chart is blank so I must not have it setup correctly. Will get to those details later. All of the other graphs appear to be working fine and are being updated by VWS regularly. I may remove the THW Index as it is blank. Not sure exactly what is anyway but think it has something to do with Solar/UV data which I don't have on my VP2.

More later...

[saratogaWX]

Got some minor corrections that have cropped up based on issues discovered and reported:

You can download a fresh copy of the Base that you used for the install, and then replace the following pages in your installation with copies from the distribution .zip:


   top.php
   common.php
   wxgraphs.php
   wxlinks.php
   wxastronomy.php


For the Base-USA folks, also replace:

  get-nnvl-iod.php

For the Base-Canada folks, also replace:

  ec-forecast.php

All those updates address Notice: messages when error_reporting(E_ALL) is enabled.

I also suggest you modify your current Settings.php to replace

Code:

# Automatic Info we might need
############################################################################
$SITE['REMOTE_ADDR'] = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$SITE['REMOTE_HOST'] = $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'];
$SITE['WEBROOT'] = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
$SITE['REQURI'] = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$SITE['SERVERNAME'] = $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];

  with

Code:

# Automatic Info we might need
############################################################################
if(isset($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']))   {$SITE['REMOTE_ADDR'] = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];}
if(isset($_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST']))   {$SITE['REMOTE_HOST'] = $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'];}
if(isset($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'])) {$SITE['WEBROOT'] = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];}
if(isset($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']))   {$SITE['REQURI'] = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];}
if(isset($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']))   {$SITE['SERVERNAME'] = $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];}
$SITE['PHPversion'] = phpversion();

which addresses some Notice: errata if your particular server doesn't propagate a particular server-side variable.

Best regards,
Ken

[W3DRM]

Hi Don,
May I ask what your setting looks like for this in the settings-weather php file?
$SITE['wflashdir']      = './';  // relative directory for WeatherFlash wflash.txt and wflash2.txt files

Above is what I am using and so far it has been a no go for the wflash.txt files to update. Yet if I change the above at all, I lose the thermometer on the main page....

Thank You,
Mike

Hi Mike,

Usually, WeatherFlash is installed in a subdirectory off the document root that looks like:

wflash/Data/wflash.txt
wflash/Data/wflash2.txt
wflash/Config/Units.txt
wflash/scripts/submit.php

The $SITE['wflashdir'] should be set to './wflash/Data/' IF the wflash directory is a subdirectory of the directory the template is in.  If you installed the template in a subdirectory so your setup looks like:

/wflash
/test/wxindex.php

then the setting should be to '.,/wflash/Data/
'  (which says go up one directory, then down to the wflash/Data directory to find the wflash.txt file

Remember to use relative file addressing in all the PHP Settings.php entries which require files and/or directories.

Hope this helps...

Best regards,
Ken

The highlighted line above I think should be '../wflash/Data/'

[saratogaWX]

That's right, Don.. slip of the finger

I corrected my post above.

Thanks,
Ken

[W3DRM]

Have uploaded the files and made the changes to the Settings.php file. All appears to be working just fine.

Also, I had a problem getting the NOAA IOD to run. It gave me an error and suggested that I add a php.ini file to the root with the following text in it: "allow_url_fopen = on". I did, and the NOAA IOD display came right up.

Still having problems getting my NOAA reports to run. May be a directory problem of some kind.

As someone said, you eat an elephant one bite at a time... 

EDIT: The problem with the NOAA reports was that I had the folder named "NOAA". I changed it to lowercase and bingo, it worked!!