Webtags (preserving history): Difference between revisions

<div style="background: LemonChiffon;padding:5px; margin:2px;">This page currently covers web tag names for legacy 1.9.4, and for MX up to release '''3.12.0'''</div>

In the position in any template file where Cumulus is to insert the relevant data, place a web tag in the '''general format''' specified here:  <pre><#tag_name [optional input selection parameters] [optional output modification parameters]></pre>

===Applicability to Cumulus 1 and to MX===

Various approaches are trialled in the list for indicating which flavours a web tag exists for. The [[Webtags#Davis|Davis]] section has a column that indicates the applicability.  Other sections with more web tags use pink section headings to identify their applicability to the flavours.  Finally, there are some individual entries where '''C1''' and '''MX''' symbols are used to indicate applicability.

Now to find out what is allowed for the '''input selection parameters''' and '''output modification parameters''', refer to [[Webtags/Parameters|web tag parameters]] page.

** how to control whether decimal comma (if used) is replaced by decimal point (useful for some script languages)

** the majority modify the output from almost all web tags that report a time and/or date (there are so many ways to represent times and dates this multiples up the available output considerably)

===Web tag names===

To find out what is allowed for '''tag_name''', see the various tables [[#The Web Tags for Cumulus]] later on this page.  Don't forget to check [[Webtags/Parameters|web tag parameters]] page to learn whether a web tag name you find here requires a mandatory parameter, or to find out which parameters are optionally available as the tables below are not able to indicate which of the billions of combinations possible (see [[#Scary statistics]]) are valid or invalid for particular tag names.

The web tag names available in the release/version/build you are using, can be listed (in Cumulus 1 or Cumulus MX) by adding the following line to [[Cumulus.ini#Section:_Station|Cumulus.ini]] in the [station] section...

<code>ListWebTags=1</code>

Then start Cumulus and it will create a file called WebTags.txt in the same folder as where the executable is found. That file will list all the tags your build of Cumulus can currently generate. This list only contains the tag_names, it does not indicate what parameters they can take, nor does it include the brackets the tag name is surrounded by when you quote it in a template file for Cumulus to process.

An example of the output for an early MX version is at the end of this page (the actual output does not include commas, and has just one item per line, it has been compressed for inclusion in this article).

To stop Cumulus continuing to produce new versions of that file change the line to say ...

<code> ListWebTags=0</code>

[[File:Badge vMx.png]] MX bug: The inclusion of a web tag in the list produced by this instruction, does not mean that web tag is actually populated with valid information. See https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=153096#p153096 for an example.

====Web tags mentioning (outside) temperature====

'''For Oregon Scientific weather stations using USB connections''' (e.g. WMR-200) that can have multiple temperature sensors, it is posible to configure which sensor the main temperature (for which daily and longer period extreme records are maintained) is read from, by following this set of instructions originally supplied by Steve Loft:

# Use a text editor to edit the file called ''Cumulus.ini''

# In that new line, type the command shown in the code box below, type the attribute and equals sign exactly as shown without spaces (regardless of your exact model), but for the value replace ''N'' with the relevant number from the following list:

#* To use the main sensor, replace N with '''0''' (or don't bother with this procedure, as that is default)

#* and so on, up to a possible maximum (check with your weather station, but Cumulus can accept up to 12)

'''For other weather stations''', the main sensor is what is reported for current value, daily extremes, and longer period extreme records.  This temperature is also used for calculation of derived values such as Australian Apparent Temperature, Canadian Humidity Index, and USA Heat Index.

# The 3.5.0 release of MX defines 9½ million values that can be represented using '''web tags'''!

# At 3.5.0, there are only 717 options for the '''tag_name''' in the general format given above.

# That discrepancy is purely because some of those 717 tag names can be associated with input parameters, (and for Oregon Scientific stations,you can select which temperature is reported from  that affect what value is selected to be output by the web tag

# Well adding all possible different output parameters generates the billions of different ways to output the millions of values!

The statistics quoted above keep increasing as MX is developed, the last time I checked, there were another forty or so tag names, and lots more parameters, so the alternatives are probably well over ten million now.

== Brief history of this page==

This page was created in August 2009, to list the tags for the (legacy) Cumulus 1 software. Initially, there were going to be further pages to explain individual web tags, e.g. [[Forecast_webtag]]; but that idea was never completed. 

 

When MX came out of beta (3.0.0), it has been developing rapidly, as the statistics above suggest, the number of web tag names and input/output modification parameters, to document became too much for one Wiki page, hence the moving of all documentation about modification parameters to a sub-page.  There are still a lot of web tag names to document on this page, and separation into a number of pages was considered, but it is easier to have just one page to refer in answers to questions raised in the forum.

 

 

Put simply, a web tag is included in a [[Cumulus template file]] to indicate where Cumulus should insert values when it produces an output file. The concept of [[Customised_templates#What_is_meant_by_.27Cumulus_processes_templates.27|processing templates]] is explained in another article.

 

 

* a [[Customised_templates#HTML_5_-_a_very_quick_guide_to_structure|web page]],

*a [[Xml_webtags|eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML)]] file.

 

 

 

.

Full support is available via the support forum at https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=40 for the latest MX release. Given that some users may still be running an older MX release, where possible any web tag listed below for MX indicates at which release it first became available.

Here follow tables indicating what web tag names are available to be used, tables group them by the basic purpose of the tags listed.

This sub-section applies only to those using Ecowitt GW1000 (also Froggit DS1500, and other equivalents, see [[Supported Devices]]) an interface unit that picks up various external sensors and sends the data via an application programming interface to MX which then generates the following web tags:

|GW1000 firmware version string

|Distance to last strike (same units as wind run - miles/km/nm) (Returns 0.0 if you don't have a sensor, GW1000 api returns max value you can put in a byte - 0xFF which translates to 158.4 miles = 255 km if have sensor but no strike detected yet, so MX translates that to '----')

|Date and Time of last strike (default without output parameters is locale's short time format e.g. 18:02 or 6:02 pm, without date, but tag accepts both date and time output parameters). Returns '----' if you don't have sensor or there has not been a strike since the sensor was installed. (GW1000 api returns FFFF FFFF seconds after midnight on 01 Jan 1970, which translates to 07/02/2106 06:28:15, so MX translates that to '----')

|Number of strikes since midnight, default 0

|User Temperature 1