In this tutorial, we are going to create a PHP application to display weather forecast information using an API. I have used OpenWeatherMap service to implement this with PHP.
This is one of the best API service that provides weather forecast. It provides tremendous volume of weather data regularly. It is a free service with limited access. For basic usage, it should be sufficient and for advanced you may have to pay for it. Integrating this API with a PHP application is easy. The following three steps are used for the integration.
- Get API key
- Locate city id
- Request weather forecast by sending API key and city id
In this tutorial, we are going to create a PHP application to display weather forecast information using an API. I have used OpenWeatherMap service to implement this with PHP. We will just grab the weather information provided by the API and display it in the application.
This is one of the best API service that provides weather forecast. It provides tremendous volume of weather data regularly. It is a free service with limited access. For basic usage, it should be sufficient and for advanced you may have to pay for it. Integrating this API with a PHP application is easy. The following three steps are used for the integration.
- Get API key
- Locate city id
- Request weather forecast by sending API key and city id
Get OpenWeatherMap API key
- To get the API key, we need to register with OpenWeatherMap. After signing up, it will redirect us to the profile settings.
- Above the profile settings form, there is a top menu containing several tabs. Click the API keys tab and copy the API key. This will be later used to request API for the weather forecasts.
<?php
$apiKey = "API KEY";
$cityId = "CITY ID";
$googleApiUrl = "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?id=" . $cityId . "&lang=en&units=metric&APPID=" . $apiKey;
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $googleApiUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$data = json_decode($response);
$currentTime = time();
?>
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Forecast Weather using OpenWeatherMap with PHP</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class="report-container">
<h2><?php echo $data->name; ?> Weather Status</h2>
<div class="time">
<div><?php echo date("l g:i a", $currentTime); ?></div>
<div><?php echo date("jS F, Y",$currentTime); ?></div>
<div><?php echo ucwords($data->weather[0]->description); ?></div>
</div>
<div class="weather-forecast">
<img
src="http://openweathermap.org/img/w/<?php echo $data->weather[0]->icon; ?>.png"
class="weather-icon" /> <?php echo $data->main->temp_max; ?>°C<span
class="min-temperature"><?php echo $data->main->temp_min; ?>°C</span>
</div>
<div class="time">
<div>Humidity: <?php echo $data->main->humidity; ?> %</div>
<div>Wind: <?php echo $data->wind->speed; ?> km/h</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>