blog.lazkani.io/content/posts/the-story-behind-cmw.md

+++
title = "The Story Behind cmw"
author = ["Elia el Lazkani"]
date = 2019-08-31T21:00:00+02:00
lastmod = 2021-06-28T00:01:15+02:00
tags = ["python", "development"]
categories = ["misc"]
draft = false
+++

A few days ago, [Kushal Das](https://kushaldas.in) shared a curl command.

The command was as follows:

```text
$ curl https://wttr.in/
```

I, obviously, was curious.
I ran it and it was interesting.
So it returns the weather right ? Pretty cool huh!

<!--more-->


## The interest {#the-interest}

That got me interested to learn how does this work exactly.


## The investigation {#the-investigation}

I looked at [https://wttr.in/](https://wttr.in/) and it seemed to have a GitHub [link](https://github.com/chubin/wttr.in) and a repository.
That is very interesting.
This is a Python application, one can tell by the code or if you prefer the GitHub bar at the top.

Anyway, one can also tell that this is a [Flask](https://palletsprojects.com/p/flask/) application from the following code in the bin/srv.py.

```python
from flask import Flask, request, send_from_directory
APP = Flask(__name__)
```

By reading the README.md of the repository one can read.

> wttr.in uses [wego](http://github.com/schachmat/wego) for
> visualization and various data sources for weather forecast
> information.

Let's jump to the _wego_ repository then.

_wego_ seems to be a command line application to graph the weather in the terminal.

Great, so what I did with [cmw](https://gitea.project42.io/Elia/cmw) is already done in Go and API'fied by a different project.

My answer to that accusation is obviously this post.


## The idea {#the-idea}

I played a bit more with [https://wttr.in/](https://wttr.in/) and I found it to an interesting API.
I am trying to work on my python development foo so to me that was a perfect little project to work on.
From my perspective this was simply an API and I am to consume it to put it back in my terminal.


## The work {#the-work}

The beginning work was very rough and hidden away in a private repository and was moved later [here](https://gitea.project42.io/Elia/cmw).
The only thing left from that work is the `--format` argument which allows you full control over what gets sent.
But again, let's not forget what the real purpose of this project was.
So I decided to make the whole API as accessible as possible from the command line tool I am writing.

```text
 $ cmw --help
 usage: cmw [-h] [-L LOCATION] [-f FORMAT] [-l LANG] [-m] [-u] [-M] [-z] [-o]
            [-w] [-A] [-F] [-n] [-q] [-Q] [-N] [-P] [-p] [-T] [-t TRANSPARENCY]
            [--v2] [--version]

 Get the weather!

 optional arguments:
   -h, --help            show this help message and exit
   -L LOCATION, --location LOCATION
                         Location (look at epilog for more information)
   -f FORMAT, --format FORMAT
                         Query formatting
   -l LANG, --lang LANG  The language to use
   -m, --metric          Units: Metric (SI) (default outside US)
   -u, --uscs            Units: USCS (default in US)
   -M, --meter-second    Units: Show wind speed in m/s
   -z, --zero            View: Only current weather
   -o, --one             View: Current weather & one day
   -w, --two             View: Current weather & two days
   -A, --ignore-user-agent
                         View: Force ANSI output format
   -F, --follow-link     View: Show the 'Follow' line from upstream
   -n, --narrow          View: Narrow version
   -q, --quiet           View: Quiet version
   -Q, --super-quiet     View: Super quiet version
   -N, --no-colors       View: Switch terminal sequences off
   -P, --png             PNG: Generate PNG file
   -p, --add-frame       PNG: Add frame around output
   -T, --mid-transparency
                         PNG: Make transparency 150
   -t TRANSPARENCY, --transparency TRANSPARENCY
                         PNG: Set transparency between 0 and 255
   --v2                  v2 interface of the day
   --version             show program's version number and exit

     Supported Location Types
     ------------------------
     City name:                  Paris
     Unicode name:               Москва
     Airport code (3 letters):   muc
     Domain name:                @stackoverflow.com
     Area code:                  94107
     GPS coordinates:            -78.46,106.79

     Special Location
     ----------------
     Moon phase (add ,+US
     or ,+France
     for these cities):          moon
     Moon phase for a date:      moon@2016-10-25

     Supported languages
     -------------------

     Supported: af da de el et fr fa hu id it nb nl pl pt-br ro ru tr uk vi
```

```text
 $ cmw --location London --lang nl --one
 Weerbericht voor: London

      \   /     Zonnig
       .-.      20 °C
    ― (   ) ―   → 19 km/h
       `-’      10 km
      /   \     0.0 mm
                                                        ┌─────────────┐
 ┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤  za 31 aug  ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
 │          's Ochtends         │          's Middags   └──────┬──────┘    's Avonds          │           's Nachts          │
 ├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
 │    \  /       Gedeeltelijk b…│    \  /       Gedeeltelijk b…│               Bewolkt        │    \  /       Gedeeltelijk b…│
 │  _ /"".-.     21 °C          │  _ /"".-.     23..24 °C      │      .--.     20 °C          │  _ /"".-.     18 °C          │
 │    \_(   ).   ↗ 12-14 km/h   │    \_(   ).   ↗ 18-20 km/h   │   .-(    ).   ↗ 20-25 km/h   │    \_(   ).   → 16-19 km/h   │
 │    /(___(__)  10 km          │    /(___(__)  10 km          │  (___.__)__)  10 km          │    /(___(__)  10 km          │
 │               0.0 mm | 0%    │               0.0 mm | 0%    │               0.0 mm | 0%    │               0.0 mm | 0%    │
 └──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
 Locatie: London [51.509648,-0.099076]
```


## Conclusion {#conclusion}

All I got to say in conclusion is that it was a lot of fun working on [cmw](https://gitea.project42.io/Elia/cmw) and I learned a lot.
I'm not going to publish the package on [PyPI](https://pypi.org/) because seriously, what's the point.
But if you are interested in making changes to the repository, make an MR.