HOW-TO: Using KDE Weather Widget

[davemx]

Weather Widget is a KDE Plasmoid that needs to be added from the KDE Store. I really like it, but it has a bug, that is easily worked around.

When you right-click on the widget, and select "Configure Weather Widget", you're prompted to add information from one of two sites. One is "OWM" — Open Weather Map. That works just fine. The other is "yr.no". This is the official Norwegian weather site, and is very good indeed, for weather all around the world. In order to get your weather in English, you need to go to the English Language version of the site, which is:

https://www.yr.no/en

Once there, click on Search, near the top right of the page, to find the weather for your area. This is where you have to work around the fault in the program. Instead of copying the full URL of the page for your area, you have to change it. So, for example, the URL for the forecast for Manchester, England, is:

https://www.yr.no/ en/forecast/daily-table/2-2643123/United%20Kingdom/England/Manchester/Manchester

However, if you paste that address into the settings for the widget, it doesn't work. You have to substitute the following:

https://www.yr.no/ place/United%20Kingdom/England/Manchester/Manchester

(I put the space in to prevent the forum from hiding the full URL addresses.)

In other words, remove the part en/forecast/daily-table/1-2345678 (the numeric part will depend on your area), and substitute simply place. This will now work.

The other thing is that you need to have two packages installed before it will work, and one is not installed by default on MX-KDE. That's qml-module-qtquick-xmllistmodel, but unless you actually go to the page, as opposed to download the plasmoid direct from the Add Widgets side bar, you won't be told that!

[davemx]

UPDATE 24/08/2021: The yr.no/en URL now shows as Great%20Britain instead of United%20Kingdom — however, you have to change what you paste into the widget settings to United%20Kingdom otherwise it won't work! So, for example, change:

https://www.yr.no/ en/forecast/daily-table/2-2643123/Great%20Britain/England/Manchester/Manchester

to:

https://www.yr.no/ place/United%20Kingdom/England/Manchester/Manchester

I don't know if users in other countries are affected by anything similar!

[davemx]

I'm not deliberately bouncing my own post.... honest! It's just that I went to add this widget to my testing partition MX21ß2-KDE yesterday, and "Great Britain" had turned back into "United Kingdom". I don't know who is most confused here, but for the record:

Great Britain = England + Scotland + Wales
United Kingdom = Great Britain + Northern Ireland

As it's a Norwegian government-run service, maybe they are too sensitive to political changes in the UK.

[Eadwine Rose]

Careful to not let things derail into politics, see the forum rules, best not to mention that stuff at all. As far as feedback, do post it in the according beta2 thread :)

[Jerry3904]

What a fussy little widget!

[davemx]

Careful to not let things derail into politics, see the forum rules, best not to mention that stuff at all. As far as feedback, do post it in the according beta2 thread :)

This works equally on MX19KDE the only reason to mention the beta is that I had to set it up again and found out the new information.

What a fussy little widget!

I actually think that the fussiness is with the yr.no site. If you put the format required by the applet into your browser, it doesn't work. It's as if it needs different urls to view the site in a browser, and access the info needed for the widget. The openweather url works as it is. It's worthwhile though, because the results you get once you set it up, are great. With yr.no, you even get wind speed and direction. The widget hasn't been updated for a few years, but still works, once it's set up, and I'm not sure there's a better one.

[Jerry3904]

I'm not sure there's a better one

Maybe not for KDE, but the Xfce weather widget is hands down the best in the business IMO.

[paddys-hill]

I actually think that the fussiness is with the yr.no site. If you put the format required by the applet into your browser, it doesn't work. It's as if it needs different urls to view the site in a browser, and access the info needed for the widget. The openweather url works as it is. It's worthwhile though, because the results you get once you set it up, are great. With yr.no, you even get wind speed and direction. The widget hasn't been updated for a few years, but still works, once it's set up, and I'm not sure there's a better one.

You and your browser are using the yr website interface.
The weather "app" (throws up into keyboard - I hate that term) is using the yr API interface.
They are different things. But they both access the same data. For non-programming folks, it's sort of like two completely different questions that have the same answer - "What's the time?" and "Che ora è?"

The xfce4-weather-plugin uses the "Weather and astronomical data from The Norwegian Meteorological Institute" who also provide both a website and an API...

and guess what

The yr organization is a partnership between the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and a media organization (you can search the internet to find that.)

Did you find that interesting?
b

[paddys-hill]

Some may find the information at https://developer.yr.no/ interesting though. I wonder if KDE have realised that the API they are using is about to expire? Are the MX packagers for KDE "apps" aware of this?

[davemx]

Some may find the information at https://developer.yr.no/ interesting though. I wonder if KDE have realised that the API they are using is about to expire? Are the MX packagers for KDE "apps" aware of this?

I think that refers to the retro.yr.no version of the site which has already expired. I could be wrong.