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Accuweather changed, and now the 'weather' script is broken!

A reader writes in to report that Accuweather has changed their Web page layout and the shell script from Wicked Cool Shell Scripts that returns the weather forecast (script #63, weather.sh), is broken.

Dave's Answer: He's right, but amazingly, the fix is less than 25 characters long!

Instead of the embedded sed statement containing:

sed -n '/<font class="sevendayten">/,/[^[:digit:]]<\/font>/p' | \

it should now be replaced with:

sed -n '/Start - Forecast Cell/,/End - Forecast Cell/p'

That's all there is to it.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the scripts that are scraping Web sites from my book won't break again as formats change, but that's why it's so helpful for you to try and step through the scripts so you can understand how the script parses the source and extracts the information needed.

And if something else does break, you can always contact me with specific questions!

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Categorized: Shell Script Programming (Article 3709)
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Comments

Looks like Accuweather has entered some embedded comments with Real????[TM] in the source. The do not show up in the rendered html page, but they are in the source as comments.

Example:
96. Max. UV 6.-->

Since the script is not set to parse out the comment I get this garbage:

Today
Sunshine, very warm and humid - High 89
96. Max. UV 6.-->

Is there a way to fix it where I can display the "Real" info properly?

Also can I scrub it so it does not appear in the output? Just in case the "Real" info is not wanted.

Thanks - Paco

Posted by: Paco at November 10, 2005 2:18 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!