Title: Weather Feeds: these are NOT covered under the backstage terms, please do NOT use them.

Hello Everyone,

Jem is not around today, so I've been asked to put my official BBC hat on [1] and let you all know the situation with the weather feeds referenced below.

Here's the short version

The weather feeds detailed below are *NOT COVERED* by the BBC backstage terms.
Please, *DO NOT* use those feeds.
I'm *REALLY SORRY*, I know you're all frustrated by the saga of getting the weather feeds to you.

So, here's a slightly longer version.

As you all know, the data in the weather feeds isn't actually owned by the BBC - the BBC has an agreement with the Met Office to use the data. The good people in BBC Weather have been negotiating with the Met to get this data publically available, but that's been a lengthy process. Obviously, we have to find an arrangement that keeps both the Met and the BBC, and you lot on the list happy.

Eventually, it was agreed in principal that the data could be released to backstage under a developer key system, so the Met would know who was using the data and how. As the government expects them to expolit their assets commercially to relieve the burden on the tax payer, this seems reasonable; they can tell if someone starts a commercial service using the non-commercial data and make them stop.

The developer key system was a slight problem, though - there have been real problems getting the system set up on the BBC infrastructure. I'm not sure what the problems have been, I'm sorry, but I do know that the BBC boxen are somewhat eccentric and difficult to work with, and probably wanted the code in BBC 32K BASIC on punch cards or something. So that's where we are.

The availability of the data without that key system has the potential to really sour the BBC's relationship with the Met Office. It may well make negotiating further data releases really hard, both internally and with other BBC partners; and might jeopardise the whole backstage project. It's bigger than 'just backstage', too - it's all of the BBC's weather service that could be affected.

So - and I'm sorry to have to ask you this - please could you refrain from using the feeds below.

Kass, the lovely head developer in weather, is trying to get a free-to-air 2 day with observations RSS feed up and running, but she's trying to do that on top of her regular stiff workload (in the same way that I keep an eye on the list above my regular job, just out of love for the project). Once the new backstage producer starts, then hopefully they'll pick up the work on the developer key. I'll keep prodding people around the organisation to keep things moving; as you know, we're restructuring inside the BBC at the moment, so things are rather up in the air. In the meantime, I really appreciate your patience and forebearance in the face of lovely JSON feeds...

I know this makes us look like a bunch of numpties, and I'm personally really sorry.

Sorry if this sounds a bit formal, I just had to rewrite it after my work webmail ate the previous draft!

Kim

[1] Heather coloured tweed, with a trout fishing fly in the hatband, for those of you who remember.

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of dotBen (aka Ben Metcalfe)
Sent: Thu 27/07/2006 17:44
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: [backstage] Finally, that bloody BBC Weather feed - here it is...

You'll all be pleased to hear that (probably unintentionally) the BBC
has launched complete RSS and JSON support for it's BBC Weather
service (data provided by the Met Office).

To get straight to the detail, the urls you need are as follows:

http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/feeds/customisation/v1/weather/4581/json.js

http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/weather/4581.xml

(Where 4581 is the BBC Weather index for London. You can find out any
other code you need by searching for your city, clicking the desired
result, and identifying the id in the resulting url.)

The important point to note is that the JSON feed is technically
referenced to on the BBC site - if you dig within the _javascript_ etc -
but not explicitly referenced for third-party use. The RSS feed,
despite clearly being on the public server, is not currently
referenced from anywhere on the BBC (as far as I can see) and has been
derived from existing logic.

How this was discovered:

The BBC News website now sports a customisable pane that is powered by
JSON. A quick scan of the HTTP Headers shows that the London feed (for
example) is powered by JSON feed at:

http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/feeds/customisation/v1/weather/4581/json.js
and the London news JSON feed:
http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/feeds/customisation/v1/newsonline_uk_edition/england/london/json.js

Now I recognised that:

http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/feeds/customisation/v1/newsonline_uk_edition/england/london/json.js
had some similarities to the original RSS url for the same feed:
http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/england/london/rss.xml

So I used the some pattern logic with the BBC Weather JSON feed:
http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/feeds/customisation/v1/weather/4581/json.js
to
http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/weather/4581/rss.xml

However the RSS url didn't work. I then tried removing the slightly
superfluous 'rss.' file name and to my surprise it worked:

http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/weather/4581.xml

Essentially, I have derived this weather RSS feed purely from
recognising the pattern logic similarities between the BBC News RSS
and JSON feed. I'm making this point clear because I do not believe
the BBC has intended these weather feeds to be public.

Further more, from my knowledge of the BBC and specifically the BBC
Weather relationship with the Met Office, the licence details
contained within the BBC Weather RSS feeds is probably incorrect (it's
just part of the standard RSS template).

So by all means make use of this data into your site/project/mashup,
but be warned this is totally unofficial and presumably could be taken
down at any moment!   I'm probably going to get an email from Tom/Jem
@ BBC too... :)


(From http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/index.php/2006/07/27/finally-bbc-weather-rss-and-json-feeds/)

--
dotBen (aka Ben Metcalfe) | e: mashup AT dotben.co.uk

PLEASE NOTE: I no longer work on the backstage.bbc.co.uk project or
for the BBC.  Please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you would like to
contact the new project team directly.
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