Google has stopped its Google Weather API

Over the past two weeks, many people have feedback in the forum and emailed me that the Google Weather module has stopped working with the following error message:

Warning: simplexml_load_string() 
[function.simplexml-load-string]

After some googling, it's confirmed that Google has stopped its Google Weather API service entirely since August 7th!

For details, you can refer to the following articles:

There are some alternatives suggested - mainly two options: wunderground.com and the Yahoo weather API.

I'm still trying to decide which one to go with. Both are not as good and convenient as the Google Weather API and requires a lot of recoding. But the worst part for both services are:

  • Within US, it's not much of a problem.
  • But for other countries, the Google API is smart enough to specify only the city. For the wunderground API, the user has to type in both the city and the country.
  • For the Yahoo Weather API, it's even worse! It uses WOEID - Where On Earth ID! How is your user suppose to know this WOEID!

Will try to come with some alternative solutions ASAP so that your Google Weather module will continue to work.

In the meantime, if you have any alternative suggestions, please do let me know.

Will keep all of you posted of the progress, ok?

Regards,
/kksou

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