TwitterWeatherBot

My personal twitter weather bot

Basic features:

• Tweet a forecast for the near future every 2 hours
• Add a random weather fact to the 2 hour forecast
• Tweet alerts from the NWS
• Retweet all tweets from the local weather station

Configuration

Required:

Logging

Set the dierctory path where logs will be stored. Paths are relative to index.js.

"log": {
  "logDir": "logs"
}

Open Weather Map

The forecast area is set config.weather.openWeatherMap.location using one of these combinations.

• City Name
  q: "{city name},{country code}"
• City ID
  A list of city ids can be downloaded here.
  id: {city id}
• Geographic Coordinates
  lat: {lat}
lon: {lon}
• Zip Code
  zip: "{zip code},{country code}"

set config.weather.openWeatherMap.key to the openWeatherMap api key

Example

"weather":{
  "openWeatherMap": {
    "location": {
      "id": 4381982
    },
    "key": "API KEY"
  }
}

Twitter

config.twitter contains keys generated from the twitter developer account.

"twitter": {
  "consumer_key": "CONSUMER KEY",
  "consumer_secret": "CONSUMER SECRET",
  "access_token_key": "ACCESS TOKEN KEY",
  "access_token_secret": "ACCESS TOKENM SECRET"
}

Optional Configuration:

Alerts

Alerts are sent out at midnight, 6:00, noon, and 18:00.
Alert requests must contain an email, app name, app version, and a website in the header. These are set in config.weather.alerts.app
weather.alerts.params will contain get parameters to send to api.weather.gov/alerts. The NWS has a request testing tool here under the "Specification" tab.

Example:

"weather": {
  "alerts": {
    "disabled": false,
    "app": {
      "contact": "yourEmail@example.com",
      "name": "AppName",
      "version": "0.1",
      "website": "www.yourWebsite.com"
    },
    "params": {
      "active": true,
      "area": "MO",
      "status": "actual"
    }
  }
}

Alert Filters

Filters are in the form:

{
  "restriction":"FILTER TYPE",
  "path": "PATH TO VALUE",
  "value": "VALUE FOR FILTERING",
  "keep": true
}

where

• restriction is the type of filter
• path is the path in the alert object to the value to be filtered
• value will be different depending on the filter type
• keep is true if all alerts matching the filter are to be kept and false if all alerts not matching the filter are to be kept

Available filter types:

• after
  Matches alerts with dates after and excluding the time t when alerts are tweeted
  value is a number of hours to offset t
• before
  Matches alerts with dates before and excluding the time t when alerts are tweeted
  value is a number of hours to offset t
• contains
  Matches alerts with arrays containing VALUE value is an element of an array to be searched for. it must be a primitive value
• has
  Matches alerts where PATH in the object exits
  value is not needed
  The has filter is always used first
• equals
  Matches alerts with VALUE exactly equal to the value at path
  value is a primitive value to be compared with using strict equality
• matches
  Matches alerts with strings matching a regex pattern
  value contains a regex string

Filters go in an array at config.weather.alerts.filters.

Example:
Keep all alerts where "Boone;" or "Boone, MO" is used to describe the area and discard all alerts that have been replaced by another alert.

"weather": {
  "alerts": {
    ...
    "filters": [
      {
        "restriction": "matches",
        "path": "properties.areaDesc",
        "value": "Boone;|Boone, MO;",
        "keep": true
      },
      {
        "restriction": "has",
        "path": "properties.replacedBy",
        "keep": false
      }
    ]
  }
}

Extra Messages

Extra messages are appended at the end of every forecast tweet. They give additional weather information and are picked at random.

Extra messages require coordiantes to work.
config.extra.coordinates.elevation is the elevation in meters
config.extra.coordinates.long is the longitude west(west is negative, east is positive)
config.extra.coordinates.lat is the north latitude(north is positive, south is negative)

Example:

"extra":{
  "coordinates": {
    "elevation": 231,
    "long": -92.3341,
    "lat": 38.9517
  },
  ...
}

The avaialable message types are

• joke Fetches a random joke from data/jokes.json's "general" array
• tutorial Mostly tells what weather conditions forecast icons correspond to.
• lunar Tells the current phase of the moon
• season Tells the number of days between the latest solstice/equinox and the next solstice/equinox
• sunrise At day tells sunset and sunrise times and day length. At night tells last sunset and next sunrise and night length.
• beaufort Describes the current wind speed using the Beaufort scale
• records Tells the hottest temperature, the coldest temperature, or the most precipitation that has ever occoured on the current day of the year.
• cloudiness Forecasted %cloudiness for the next 9 hours same as the main forecast
• humidity Forecasted %humidity for the next 9 hours same as the main forecast
• precipitation Forecasted precipitation in mm for the next 9 hours same as the main forecast. If there is no precipitation cloudiness, humidity, or pressuire is displayed instead.
• pressure Forecasted pressure in hectopascals for the next 9 hours same as the main forecast.

The probability of each type of message showing up is set by a weight. The probability of a message type showing up is its weight / sum of all weights.

Setting all weights to 0 and having extras enabled causes an error.

Example:
The sum of all the weights is 100. Jokes have 1/100 chance of showing up. Moon phase messages have a 15/100 chance of showing up.

"extra":{
  ...
  "probabilities":{
    "joke": 1,
    "tutorial": 9,
    "lunar": 15,
    "season": 5,
    "sunrise": 15,
    "beaufort": 10,
    "records": 0,
    "cloudiness": 10,
    "humidity": 10,
    "precipitation": 15,
    "pressure": 10
  }
}

Extras can be disabled with:

"extra":{
  "disabled": true,
  ...
}

Retweets

config.twitter.localStationHandle can be set to a local weather station's twitter handle to retweet all their tweets every hour on the 30 minute mark.

Example:

"twitter": {
  ...
  "localStationHandle": "NWSStLouis"
}