I'm creating an app (PHP) that takes yahoo weather data from the free RSS feed and correlates it with a colour hex based on data retrieved from the RSS feed. The issue I'm having is finding a way to grab the location code or WOEID without doing it manually.
Yahoos API sends back an RSS feed as long as you provide a WOEID -> http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?w=4097
Is there an ethical way of doing this? My beginner knowledge tells me I have to write a script that would search yahoo using the term and grab the first WOEID, but I would assume yahoo doesn't want scripts doing this and it seems overcomplicated... If not, are there any alternative APIs that would make this easier on me?
Thanks!
Why not just use the Yahoo! GeoPlanet service to resolve a place to a WOEID? Or use the YQL service to access GeoPlanet via it's table?
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('Barrie CA')?appid=[yourappidhere]
or
http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.places%20where%20text%3D%22Barrie%20CA%22&format=xml
No need for scraping.
Cheers
G
(Disclosure; I work for Yahoo! and am part of the group behind WOEIDs and GeoPlanet)
I got some useful information from: http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/geoplanet/
And
http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/geoplanet/guide/api-reference.html#api-countries
Find the WOEID of a significant landmark: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('sydney%20opera%20house')?appid=[yourappidhere]
Resolve a WOEID to a place: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/2507854?appid=[yourappidhere]
Find the WOEID of a specific place: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('northfield%20mn%20usa')?appid=[yourappidhere]
Obtain a range of WOEIDs that match a given place, ordered by the most likely: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('springfield');start=0;count=5?appid=[yourappidhere]
Find the parent of a given WOEID (and return a detailed record): http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/638242/parent?select=long&appid=[yourappidhere]
Return the Placename for a given WOEID in a specific language (where it exists): http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('usa')?lang=fr&appid=[yourappidhere]
To obtain the representation of a place in JSON format: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/2487956?format=json&appid=[yourappidhere]
To obtain a list of geographies that neighbor a specific WOEID: http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/12795711/neighbors?appid=[yourappidhere]
Yahoo! Geo Technologies is pleased to announce the availability of PlaceFinder support in YQL. The geo.placefinder table allows users to make requests to PlaceFinder via YQL queries. The new table provides several different ways to access PlaceFinder. A description of the supported requests and parameters can be retrieved using http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q...&appid=test. Here are a few examples:
Geocoding a street address (1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC) using free-form input format:
http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20text%3D%221600%20Pennsylvania%20Ave%2C%20Washington%2C%20DC%22&appid=test
Geocoding a street address (701 First Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089) using multi-line input format:
http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20line1%3D%22701%20First%20Ave%22%20and%20line2%3D%22Sunnyvale%2C%20CA%2094089%22&appid=test
Geocoding an airport code (SFO):
http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20text%3D%22sfo%22&appid=test
Geocoding a point of interest (POI) in French:
http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20text%3D%22Eiffel%20Tower%22%20and%20lang%3D%22fr%22&appid=test
Reverse geocoding using geographic coordinates:
http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20text%3D%2237.416275%2C%20-122.025092%22%20and%20gflags%3D%22R%22&appid=test
Geocoding a street address (701 First Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089) using parsed input format:
http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20house%3D%22701%22%20and%20street%3D%22First%20Ave%22%20and%20city%3D%22Sunnyvale%22%20and%20state%3D%22CA%22%20and%20postal%3D%2294089%22&appid=test
Determining the nearest cross streets and timezone for an address:
http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20line1%2C%20line2%2C%20line3%2C%20line4%2C%20cross%2C%20timezone%20from%20geo.placefinder%20where%20text%3D%22701%20First%20Ave%2C%20Sunnyvale%2C%20CA%22%20and%20flags%3D%22T%22%20and%20gflags%3D%22C%22&appid=test
This example illustrates the YQL ability to select only specified fields from the response
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1822650/yahoo-weather-api-woeid-retrieval