Download of Maps and other Files from Weather Services

[Karen K]

Regarding pip install issues documented here, I started to update weewx-DWD.

Several weather services provide maps and other graphic and text files for general use. They can be used to enhance private weather websites. But some of them state in their conditions, that it is not allowed to link to those files directly for load reasons. Instead you have to download the files and provide a copy of it on your own web server. 

For that purpose a new module in weewx-DWD checks for updates at user defined URLs. If an update is observed, the file is downloaded to a directory within the skin of the user's choice. This is all done just before the end of the archive interval. So the file is there when the report thread starts, and it is uploaded to the user's web server together with the other files of the skin. This is all easy, only specify the URL, and that is it.

Additionally encoding of the file can be changed in case of text files. For example, if the file is provided in ISO8859-1, and you need it with HTML entities, this module can do the conversion.

For some common data provided by the German Weather Service DWD there are shortcuts for the configuration. So you need not enter the whole URL for those cases.

But it is not only the german weather service, the module works with every weather service.