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. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
