WebParser: Weather Skin Translations


One of the things that is often asked is "How can I translate the weather conditions text, returned by WebParser when creating or editing a weather skin, to my own language?"

This actually pretty simple to do. First find the measure or measures (often in a weather skin there will be 3 - 5 of them) which are returning the "weather conditions" text. It will look something like this:

[MeasureCurrentWeatherConditions]
Measure=WebParser
Url=[MeasureYahooWeather]
StringIndex=34

Note that a weather skin normally works by having a first, primary measure that retrieves all the information from the weather RSS feed in one shot. Then there will be subsequent measures which will extract the individual bits of information from the large array of values returned by this first measure. So you will often see something like:

[MeasureYahooWeather]
Measure=WebParser
UpdateRate=600
URL=http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=#Location#&u=#Unit#
RegExp=(?siU)<title>.*- (.*)</title>.*<link>(.*)/\*(.*)</link>.*<description>(.*)</description>.*<language>(.*)</language>.*<lastBuildDate>(.*)</lastBuildDate>.*<yweather:location city="(.*)".*region="(.*)".*country="(.*)".*<yweather:units temperature="(.*)".*distance="(.*)".* pressure="(.*)".*speed="(.*)".*<yweather:wind chill="(.*)".*direction="(.*)".*speed="(.*)".*<yweather:atmosphere humidity="(.*)".* visibility="(.*)".*pressure="(.*)".* rising="(.*)".*<yweather:astronomy sunrise="(.*)".*sunset="(.*)".*<title>(.*)</title>.*<width>(.*)</width>.*<height>(.*)</height>.*<link>(.*)</link>.*<url>(.*)</url>.*<title>(.*)</title>.*<geo:lat>(.*)</geo:lat>.*<geo:long>(.*)</geo:long>.*<link>(.*)/\*(.*)</link>.*<pubDate>(.*)</pubDate>.*<yweather:condition text="(.*)".*code="(.*)".*temp="(.*)".*date="(.*)".*<img src="(.*)".*Current Conditions:</b><br />(.*)<BR />.*Forecast:</b><BR />(.*)<br />.*(.*)<br />.*<a href="(.*)/\*(.*)">.*provided by <a href="(.*)" >(.*)</a>.*<yweather:forecast day="(.*)".*date="(.*)".*low="(.*)".*high="(.*)".*text="(.*)".*code="(.*)".*<yweather:forecast day="(.*)".*date="(.*)".*low="(.*)".*high="(.*)".*text="(.*)".*code="(.*)".*

Followed by something like this later on in the skin:

[MeasureCurrentWeatherConditions]
Measure=WebParser
Url=[MeasureYahooWeather]
StringIndex=34

As you can see, the measure [MeasureCurrentWeatherConditions] is using as its "Url=" the result of [MeasureYahooWeather] (our first main RSS measure) and specifically asking for StringIndex 34, the index in the array of returned values which holds the first of the "Weather Condition" values, in this case the "Current Conditions".

Since Weather.com / Yahoo Weather return these values in English, you may want to translate them to your native language. To do so, add a line at the end of each of the measures that specifically return "Weather Conditions" text. In our current example, after the line "StringIndex=34".

RegExpSubstitute=1
Substitute="(?i)^Cloudy$":"Bewölkt","^Partly Cloudy$":"Teilweise Bewölkt"

And so on... Continuing with the pattern:

Substitute="Thing to replace":"Thing to replace with","Thing to replace":"Thing to replace with"

The punctuation is important. "Thing to replace" and "Thing to replace with" are enclosed in quotes. There is a colon between them. Pairs are separated with commas.

We use RegExpSubstitute so a regular expression comparison is used. Then in the Substitute option, we first tell it to be case insensitive (?i), and look for very specific strings by using start-of-string ^ and end-of-string $ as boundaries.

That is all there is to it. In our example above, "Cloudy" will be replaced with "Bewölkt" when the text is later displayed in a meter.


What "Weather Conditions" text codes are returned by Yahoo Weather so I know what to translate?"

Here is a list with the number of the icon and the text returned:

0		tornado
1 tropical storm
2 hurricane
3 severe thunderstorms
4 thunderstorms
5 mixed rain and snow
6 mixed rain and sleet
7 mixed snow and sleet
8 freezing drizzle
9 drizzle
10 freezing rain
11 showers
12 showers
13 snow flurries
14 light snow showers
15 blowing snow
16 snow
17 hail
18 sleet
19 dust
20 foggy
21 haze
22 smoky
23 blustery
24 windy
25 cold
26 cloudy
27 mostly cloudy (night, but the "night" text is not included)
28 mostly cloudy (day, but the "day" text is not included)
29 partly cloudy (night, but the "night" text is not included)
30 partly cloudy (day, but the "day" text is not included)
31 clear (night, but the "night" text is not included)
32 sunny
33 fair (night, but the "night" text is not included)
34 fair (day, but the "day" text is not included)
35 mixed rain and hail
36 hot
37 isolated thunderstorms
38 scattered thunderstorms
39 scattered thunderstorms
40 scattered showers
41 heavy snow
42 scattered snow showers
43 heavy snow
44 partly cloudy
45 thundershowers
46 snow showers
47 isolated thundershowers
3200 not available