If you need to know weather data for your business or to develop an application you will find this article quite useful. In the next paragraphs, we will introduce you to APIs and explain, step by step, how you can get weather data from anywhere! Don’t get mad on this topic, we have all covered so you can start using the best weather API after reading this.
Firstly, we would like to talk about why weather is so relevant to have its software developments. And also, why geolocalization plays a singular role in its functionalities. Weather is omnipresent in everyday life. It is the first topic when you don’t know how to start a conversation and affects your mood and your activities. But on a bigger scale, a bad season can completely ruin a harvest or put an entire town in danger. Knowing the forecast is, in conclusion, a fundamental aspect of companies that rely on the weather. Even more for those who sell their products to other countries.
And now we want to focus on worldwide coordinates because you will need them if you want to use a weather data API. Geolocation is a technology that uses data obtained from devices to identify their actual physical location. That result will be composed of the link between two important number combinations: latitude and longitude. They highlight a specific and exact place on the globe, where you are right now. In software, this information reduces the spectrum of weather possibilities to only one city and improves the quality of your data.
Now that we already know the connection between weather and geolocalization, we can move to a more technical concept. API is the short expression of Application Programming Interface and it is used in almost all the Internet. These programs work as translators whose function is to join systems, software, and applications. With APIs, it is possible to offer a more familiar user experience to people, so they can easily get what they need. In your case, with the information you will provide, the API relates two different databases: location and weather.
Let’s see an example with the best weather API: Current Weather And Forecasted API. It covers small, medium, or big cities from the 5 continents and you can customize it with your language! Supposing that your business is located in London, United Kingdom, the first thing you have to do is sign up. After you have subscribed to this Weather API, you have to look for the current time endpoint. This feature will return you a series of data indicators of the weather right now in London.
Have you figured out the latitude and longitude? You must paste the codes in the provided boxes as they appear in the image below. Under it, you can change the language, if you want. And you can also modify the programming language of your response. There are several options, such as JSON or XML.
Your weather data should look like the following sample:
With the API key, you can see on the top of the website, you can also make more than 49 calls without charging. Check the 5 or 16 days forecast from any place in the world!