Yahoo Weather API WOEID retrieval

Question

I'm creating an app (PHP) that takes yahoo weather data from the free RSS feed and correlates it with a colour hex based on data retrieved from the RSS feed. The issue I'm having is finding a way to grab the location code or WOEID without doing it manually.

Yahoos API sends back an RSS feed as long as you provide a WOEID -> http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?w=4097

Is there an ethical way of doing this? My beginner knowledge tells me I have to write a script that would search yahoo using the term and grab the first WOEID, but I would assume yahoo doesn't want scripts doing this and it seems overcomplicated... If not, are there any alternative APIs that would make this easier on me?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Why not just use the Yahoo! GeoPlanet service to resolve a place to a WOEID? Or use the YQL service to access GeoPlanet via it's table?

http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('Barrie CA')?appid=[yourappidhere] 

or

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.places%20where%20text%3D%22Barrie%20CA%22&format=xml 

No need for scraping.

Cheers

G

(Disclosure; I work for Yahoo! and am part of the group behind WOEIDs and GeoPlanet)

Answer 2

I got some useful information from: http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/geoplanet/

And

http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/geoplanet/guide/api-reference.html#api-countries

1. Find the WOEID of a significant landmark: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('sydney%20opera%20house')?appid=[yourappidhere]

2. Resolve a WOEID to a place: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/2507854?appid=[yourappidhere]

3. Find the WOEID of a specific place: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('northfield%20mn%20usa')?appid=[yourappidhere]

4. Obtain a range of WOEIDs that match a given place, ordered by the most likely: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('springfield');start=0;count=5?appid=[yourappidhere]

5. Find the parent of a given WOEID (and return a detailed record): http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/638242/parent?select=long&appid=[yourappidhere]

6. Return the Placename for a given WOEID in a specific language (where it exists): http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('usa')?lang=fr&appid=[yourappidhere]

7. To obtain the representation of a place in JSON format: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/2487956?format=json&appid=[yourappidhere]

8. To obtain a list of geographies that neighbor a specific WOEID: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/12795711/neighbors?appid=[yourappidhere]