Webtags (preserving history): Difference between revisions

Webtags (preserving history) (view source)

Revision as of 10:56, 5 August 2020

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 This is meant for services either on the same computer as Cumulus or on your local network. It is not secure, and should not be available, nor requested, via any external network or the internet.
-The [[MX Administrative Interface]] uses some application programming interface (api) calls to obtain the data each web page in that interface needs, and another api to return the results of any edit made. If you wanted your '''CumulusMX/interface/todayyest.html''' web page to include something else (e.g. snow falling/lying/depth) you would edit that HTML page to have the extra sub-table you want (you cannot extend the existing rainfall table as that is dynamically created by existing api) and you would edit the associated JavaScript file '''CumulusMX/interface/js/todayyest.js''' to add a new api call seeking snowdepth, snowfalling, snowlying tags for today (unfortunately there are no tags for yesterday's snow) and to place the returned values into your new sub-table (probably using jQuery to make it easy).
+The [[MX Administrative Interface]] uses some application programming interface (api) calls to obtain the data each web page in that interface needs, and another api to return the results of any edit made. If you wanted your '''CumulusMX/interface/todayyest.html''' web page to include something else (e.g. snow falling/lying/depth) you would edit that HTML page to have the extra sub-table you want (you cannot extend the existing rainfall table as that is dynamically created by existing api) and you would edit the associated JavaScript file '''CumulusMX/interface/js/todayyest.js''' to add a new api call seeking snowdepth, snowfalling, snowlying tags for today (unfortunately there are no tags for yesterday's snow) and to place the returned values into your new sub-table (probably using jQuery to make it easy). In a similar way, you could add anything where today and yesterday tags are available such as UV Index.
-In earlier versions of Cumulus if you wanted to make use of values processed by Cumulus, you wrote a script file referencing the web tags you wanted to use. Now if you are running other software on your device that runs MX (or a computer or other device linked directly on your personal network), you can request web tags values on demand via an application programming interface (api hereafter).
+In earlier versions of Cumulus if you wanted to make use of values processed by Cumulus, you wrote a script file referencing the web tags you wanted to use, and let Cumulus process that file at an interval set in the settings, then you had to write something to process the results at the relevant interval. Now if you are running other software on your device that runs MX (or a computer or other device linked directly on your personal network), you can request web tags values on demand via an application programming interface (api hereafter) and don't need to worry about any timing issues.
-Obviously each api request creates a processing overhead on Cumulus so use this feature wisely.
+Obviously each api request creates a processing overhead on Cumulus so use this feature wisely (minimise the information you request and minimise the frequency of requesting it). Consequently, you might not use it for extra current information. Instead, in practice it is more likely that the api will be used to request information that does not keep changing, such as what units are being used for temperature, rainfall, and wind speed.
-The examples below focus on obtaining current information, but in practice it is more likely that the api will be used to request information that does not keep changing, such as what units are being used for temperature, rainfall, and wind speed. The admin interface uses api techniques for all the information it needs, but each page has an api request for the version and build being used, that is another example of information that changes seldom, but can be useful to other software running on your local network.
+Each admin interface web page uses api techniques for all the information it needs. Some api calls are repeated with AJAX requesting updates for the weather information on a frequent basis, but each page has another api request that is issued just once for the version and build being used.  To my mind, it is strange that the request for units is in the repeated api call as they don't change. In some code I wrote (but later abandoned) I made use of the api calls that support the '''CumulusMX/interface/todayyest.html''' web page to get the units I wanted on another interface page, but I only called it once as it returned a lot of other information I did not need. I later found a better way, as in example below, which gives me just what I need and no more.
 == "GET" approach ==