Professional Flash® Lite® Mobile Development

Chapter 11. Creating a Weather Client

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Using Google Weather and Map APIs

• Parsing JSON using ActionScript

• Using the S60 Location Service API

• Using PureMVC to build a Weather Client

There are numerous location-based service APIs that mobile developers can utilize in their applications that are open to you as a developer for consumption.

In this chapter you'll learn how to use a weather-based Web service in your applications that utilizes the location retrieved from the device.

GOOGLE APIS

In this chapter you're going to examine a Flash Lite Weather Client, combining the S60 Symbian Location Services API covered in the last chapter, and two Google APIs:

• Google Weather API

• Google Map API

Using Google Weather API

Using the Google Weather API will allow us to retrieve the following information for use in the Flash Lite application:

• Current weather conditions for a given location

• Predicted weather forecasts for the next four days

The Google Weather API is not extensively documented; nevertheless, retrieving the data you need from service is straightforward.

Here's an example HTTP request to retrieve weather information for Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia:

http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia&hl=en

In this request you can see that it takes two query parameters in the form of a location weather=Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and also a language hl=en.

Defining Location

There are several variations of the location you can assign to weather, including the following:

• City, Country ...