Enviro Canada data source not working

jeremyh

Hi,

Is the Enviro Canada data source still working? I am using the Envcands 3.0.1 module on a 3.0.2 system but am receiving no values for most of my datapoints, and a single value of 3.0 for the temperature data point (It's cold here, but not that cold).

I am using Station id 51442 which appears to have current data (link).

When I toggle the data source on and off, the log only shows the module stopping and starting, and doesn't show any errors.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Jeremy

phildunlap

Hi Jeremy,

I touched this up about four months ago. The Canadian weather service's API had some cursory changes, but the data source should be working now.

It seems like the Canadian weather service website, http://climate.weather.gc.ca is down right now, so I cannot test at this moment.

phildunlap

Okay, looks like their website was just crunched by traffic for a second.

I experimented, I resolved,

The data source works - almost! I can confirm that it's querying the API and parsing it for values, but...
There's a bad behavior lurking in the module. The reason you're not getting data is probably because of how this data source's polling works. It was written to begin all data sets in 2008 and to fill in the time to now. Because it could deal with forecasts, it doesn't consider a time as having been read if there wasn't temperature data at that time (somewhat suspicious). In your case, Station 51442 doesn't have any temperature data in the initial request and it never advanced the time! Here's the URL for the request for the initial XML data for station 51442: http://climate.weather.gc.ca/climate_data/bulk_data_e.html?stationID=51442&Year=2008&Month=2&format=xml&timeframe=1 (note all the <temp description="Temperature" units="°C"></temp> means no data there)

This probably could use us reworking. However, it does look like a work around could exist. Currently, the EnvCan data source determines what date to poll for by the earliest point value on its data points, or 2008 if there are not data points with values. So, if you can give your data point temperature a value just before the period you're interested in getting data from, then it should work. But it's the earlier value for any active point on the source, so be sure they've all got values that are recent enough.

phildunlap

I put a date picker on the data source to choose the start date. I'll circle back and post here when it gets released.

jeremyh

Hey, nice one. Thanks Phil. I'll investigate your work-around!

phildunlap

This modification was released with Mango 3.1

Out of curiosity, did the workaround work for you?

jeremyh

Hey Phil, the workaround didn't seem to work, but I got sidetracked with some other stuff and didn't try again.

I'm now running envcands 3.1.0 but don't see the date picker on the datasource page. Should it be there/is there anything special I need to do to see it?

phildunlap

Oi. We recently changed our branching and it looks like my fix didn't get pulled into the main branch. My mistake. I have just put 3.1.1 in the store and it definitely has it. Sorry about that.