Topic: Aerisweather has been rebranded as Vaisala Xweather...

[saratogaWX]

I received an announcement from Aerisweather.com 29-Mar-2024 saying

AerisWeather is now Vaisala Xweather

We'd previously announced our ongoing transition into the Vaisala Xweather brand. This email serves to inform you that the transition is now complete, and the next time you access aerisweather.com you will be redirected to xweather.com.

We hope you'll share in our excitement about this transition and we look forward to continuing to bring you the best in weather data and mapping under the Vaisala Xweather name.

Thanks for being a member of our community!

My AW-forecast.php script (standalone and part of the Base-World Saratoga template set) uses the Aerisweather API endpoint and it is still working, but I don't know for how long they'll redirect the API requests to their new endpoint.  My original key still works, so no panic yet.

I'll be reviewing the code to use their new endpoint with existing keys and I've changed the script page to reflect the new signup for API key URL.

More as it is discovered...

[saratogaWX]

I just participated in a webinar with the Vaisala Xweather developers and asked the following questions:

1) will free/limited use API keys continue to be available to data submitters to pwsweather.com?
  Answer: yes.. old keys for api.aerisweather.com will work with data.api.xweather.com and new keys
   are available for signups at https://signup.xweather.com/pws-contributor

2) will queries to existing api.aerisweather.com continue to work?
  Answer: Yes, there are no plans to discontinue that long existing URL.  Apps using that URL should
    change to data.api.xweather.com as they update, but no urgency.

3) several APIs (VisualCrossing, OpenWeatherMap, WU/TWC) provide lang={iso-lang] capability on forecast text for multilingual support.  Are you planning on that?
  Answer: Yes, it should be available in a few months.  The alerts queries (for Canada) already support lang=(en|fr) since the EC provides alerts in English and French.

4) are you worried that Xweather might have legal issues brought by Elon Musk's 'X'?
  Answer: No.  We had Xweather before they'd rebranded Twitter to X (chuckles)

I've been working on a XW-forecast.php script (which is ready), but given the coming multilingual capability of the API and the continuation of the end-point api.aerisweather.com, I'm in no hurry to force an update to all the AW-forecast.php script set (and Base-World users) just now.

More news as I hear more...

[Vasco]

Have to admit I've adjusted the URL and headings. . .

[saratogaWX]

That will work (URL), but can be problematic for non-English versions as there is no built-in lookup for 'Xweather forecast for' in the AW-forecast-lang.php lookup tables. (I'd have to re-compile that lookup table to support Xweather name).

So, if you use English-only, then it's ok to just configure to use the Xweather name and new URL.  If you use non-English, then only changing the URL is safe (or risk Notice/Warning about not found entries in $tranTab.