Provide alternative download mechanisms like CURL

Hi,

on some rare occasions, the FTP site weather.noaa.gov is not responding. Do you still see this error? I can right now fetch the data just fine.

Hi

Great module ... but

seems that I have the same problem.

On y server, I know that certain file fetch functions are disabled.

The solution to fetch files from other servers - like here - wouild be to do it either wget or cURL.

Would it be to hard to change or include different opions.

It might even be interesting to have the option to work with local files, ... ?

Just 2 cents.

Roland

I also am on a server (Dreamhost) that disables certain file access functions. I searched on the error, and many other modules have this problem, too. Some have used CURL for a workaround solution. But I am not entirely sure how to implement it. Below is my error message:

* warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/.furgie/emlast/sumterguide.goofyorgan.com/modules/weather/weather.module on line 569.
* warning: file_get_contents(ftp://weather.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/stations/KSSC.TXT) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/.furgie/emlast/sumterguide.goofyorgan.com/modules/weather/weather.module on line 569.
* Download location for METAR data is not accessible.

Hi,

thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into implementing CURL for getting the data. However, if the PHP installation you're working with is really strict about outgoing connections, I'm afraid that no solution will possibly make the module work. Nevertheless, alternative download mechanisms are surely worth being implemented. Stay tuned.

Regards,
Tobias

I've modified the module to only use the current download mechanism if it's really available. As an alternative approach, the module tries to use CURL if that's available. If both functions are not provided by your PHP installation, it fails with the message that the download location is not available.

Please download and test weather-4.7.x-2.1. Unfortunately, I cannot test the CURL functions myself. I'd appreciate feedback if the CURL implementation works for you.

Regards,
Tobias

Version 2.0 does not support CURL. Please use version 2.2, which supports CURL and wget.

Reading the error message, it looks like your PHP installation is able to use file_get_contents() with an outside URL. However, the fetching fails for some different reason. Can you actually use any other module with tries to fetch data from outside sources? It looks to me like a problem with your setup. Maybe you're behind a firewall or something which blocks these requests?

Hm, maybe the FTP access is somehow blocked by your provider, I don't know. There's still a small chance to get this module working. Could you please replace the entire function _weather_retrieve_data() with the following code snippet? It tries to get the METAR data via HTTP POST, not FTP. If this does not work out, I'm afraid I have no more ideas how to resolve your problem.

function _weather_retrieve_data($icao) {
  $icao = strtoupper($icao);

  $metar_raw = FALSE;
  // if the FTP access does not work, try POSTing the ICAO via HTTP
  if ($metar_raw === FALSE) {
    if (function_exists('fsockopen')) {
      $handle = fsockopen('weather.noaa.gov', 80);
      if ($handle !== FALSE) {
        $request = "POST /cgi-bin/mgetmetar.pl HTTP/1.1\r\n";
        $request .= "Host: weather.noaa.gov\r\n";
        $request .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
        $request .= "Content-Length: 9\r\n\r\n";
        $request .= "cccc=$icao\r\n";
        fwrite($handle, $request);
        while (!feof($handle)) {
          $response .= fgets($handle, 1024);
        }
        fclose($handle);
        // extract the valid METAR data from the received webpage
        if (preg_match("/($icao [0-9]{6}Z .+)/", $response, $matches)) {
          $metar_raw = $matches[1];
        }
      }
    }
  }

  // check on errors
  if ($metar_raw === FALSE) {
    drupal_set_message(t('Download location for METAR data is not accessible.'), 'error');
  }

  return $metar_raw;
}

Good to hear :-)

I'll release a new version of the module shortly, which will also support different images for day and night.

Regards,
Tobias

The CURL fixes a lot of my problems. Thanks so much! Now, if I could only get weather outside of Germany.

I am too seeing the error. When open the link http://www.freefblike.com I get this error from a week. I don't know what happened with the codes, because it was unaltered from lat perfect run. Please if anybody could solve the problem. Regards!