by nshipes on Feb 08, 2012
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been actively working on the first component to Aeris Web -- the JavaScript SDK. We are continuing to test and wrap up all items required for our version 1.0 slated for release within a couple of weeks, but we wanted to provide a preview of how easy it will be to incorporate your Aeris API subscription into your custom web applications.
For instance, if you wanted to fetch the latest weather observations for Seattle, WA, you would just need to use the following snippet once you have initialized the Aeris JS SDK with your access information:
var obs = new Aeris.collections.Observations();
obs.bind('load', function(collection){
var model = collection.at(0);
alert('Currently in Seattle it is ' + model.get('ob.tempF') + ' degrees.');
});
obs.fetch('seattle,wa');
The same properties from the core data API are also used in the JavaScript SDK, so switching between the two formats is straightforward.
Built-In Widgets
We will also be including a set of basic built-in JavaScript widgets that you can include in your application that are fully customizable using CSS and custom templates. The following is an example of using our built-in Advisories widget that loads advisories for Birmingham, AL and renders it to a <div> whose id is “widget-advisories”:
var advisories = new Aeris.widgets.Advisories($('#widget-advisories'), {
params: {
p: 'birmingham,al'
}
});
All of our HTML templates are based on Handlebars JS, so it is very easy and quick to customize any of the built-in widgets or creating your own by extending our core objects.
Below are screenshots of some of the built-in widgets that will come with the Aeris JavaScript SDK.
Our included widgets also support additional features, like displaying data based on the user's geolocation or allowing them to view the data for a particular location they can search for. Additionally, widgets can be configured to auto-refresh its data based on a specific time interval, so you can ensure your data is always up to date no matter how long the page is open or application running.
We will be posting additional updates as we get closer to the official release of version 1.0 of the JavaScript SDK.
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by nshipes on Feb 03, 2012
This week we have pushed out updates to the Aeris Weather API and the iOS framework. We have also been busy wrapping up development for the initial release of the JavaScript toolkit coming soon.
The Aeris Weather API 1.0.6 update is a maintenance release that fixes several bugs and adds a few improvements. Most notably, updates to the storm cells endpoint and a new sortable date-time mapping for the storm reports, storm cells and fires endpoints. Additionally, a new “skip” parameter (currently in beta) was added which allows skipping over a specific number of results, which is useful when pagination is required. Review the version history for a complete list of changes.
Additions to the Storm Cells Endpoint
The storm cells now include a place object that provides the closest city, state and country to the storm cell. Also, a new ob.location property has been added which provides the distance and bearing to the closest city, such as “3 miles SSW of Mobile”. This better aligns the storm cells endpoint with our standard output for other similar endpoints.
Additionally, new query mappings were added for the name and state of the closest city to the storm cell, which can be used to request all storm cells within a state:
For example, the following query will return up to 100 storm cells in the state of Alabama:
/stormcells/search?query=state:al&limit=100
The following will return up to 100 storm cells in the state of Alabama with a rotation signature:
/stormcells/search?query=state:al&filter=rotating&limit=100
New sort mapping for Storm Reports
We have added two new sort mappings for storm reports: “dt” and “details”. The new “dt” mapping allows sorting results based on the report date and time.
For example, the following query will return up to 50 storm reports in the state of Minnesota, sorted newest to oldest, over the past 7 days:
/stormreports/search?query=state:mn&sort=dt:-1&from=-7days&limit=50
Note: The “dt” mapping was also added to the stormcells and fires endpoints.
The new “details” mapping allows sorting results based on the measured value in the report, when available.
For example, the following would return the top 10 snow reports in Minnesota for the past week sorted by the amount of snow reported in descending order:
/stormreports/search?query=state:mn&sort=detail:-1&filter=snow&from=-7days&limit=10
Skip Parameter
Although this feature is still in beta, we are also introducing the new “skip” parameter. This parameter can be used to skip a specified number of results, which when combined with the “limit” parameter can be useful in paging implementations.
For example, you may want to return 10 of the closest cities to Minneapolis sorted by descending distance but skip the first 10 results:
/places/closest?p=minneapolis,mn&skip=10&limit=10
Aeris iOS Framework Updates
Our 1.0.3 release of the Aeris iOS framework is a maintenance release that fixes several bugs and brings the model properties up to date with the property changes recently made in the core API.
The biggest change resulted from a bug in which the date and times displayed in the sample application were not using the proper time zone of the actual location the data was for, but instead always falling back the time zone of the iOS device. Therefore, we have added a new `timeZone` property that stores an NSTimeZone instance for the time zone of data’s location. This can then be passed to custom date formatters and calendars to get the correct day and time from the stored `timestamp` property (Note that all dates in iOS are stored in GMT). Refer to the developer documentation for the Aeris.framework for the full set of properties supported for each object.
Although new features have not been added in this update, support for batch processing and several new features are in the works will be coming very soon to the iOS framework. Refer to the full version history for the full list of changes in version 1.0.3.
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