Perl checks for rain and issues umbrella warning
Rain Check
A Perl script that retrieves the current weather forecast at dawn helps the Perlmeister decide whether to run the risk or take an umbrella just in case.
In the wet season, the question often arises as to whether rain or snow will fall from the sky during the day and therefore whether it might be advisable to take an umbrella with me to work.
Underground Weather
Ultimately, however, even occasional rain showers around noon would be irrelevant, as long as you could navigate the commute to and from work without getting wet. Luckily, the Weather Underground [1] weather service offers free forecasts for the day. Although they are certainly not 100 percent accurate, they do beat human intuition by a mile.
On CPAN, Perl programmers will find the WWW::Wunderground::API module, which uses a script to fetch the weather data from the server thanks to a free API developer key [2] procured especially for that purpose. The simple script in Listing 1 uses the module; it iterates over the hourly entries in the bulk of JSON data returned and outputs the time and the probability of rain for each hour sent in the pop (probability of precipitation) [3] entry.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.