Data Scraping with Node.js
I’m trying something completely different. I’m not going to create a bot, just try to see if I can somehow or other use live data to change what mood ring picture emerges. Looking into web scraping tools.
Seemed OK until I got to loop on these instructions, and then nothing appeared.
I need to try something EVEN simpler.
I’m trying installing a weather thingy using the instructions here: https://codeburst.io/build-a-simple-weather-app-with-node-js-in-just-16-lines-of-code-32261690901d
I’ve actually managed to install a json package, at least.
As I said, request is pretty easy to use. We just need to pass in our target url, and request returns a callback function. Our starter code looks like this:
const request = require('request');
request(url, function (err, response, body) {
console.log('error:', error);
console.log('body:', body);
And I’m stuck because I don’t know what “pass in our target url” means (Google doesn’t enlighten me) and I don’t know where to put this code. It doesn’t go in command prompt by the looks of it. Maybe in index.js?
Then I had to use cd in the command prompt to go down to the desktop, then the node-weather folder, and only THEN could I put in the command node index.js
Yes, it really does output something saying what the weather in London is!
Now I need to turn that info into one of my images.
I’ve copied all the mood ring files into the node-weather folder.
Now I think I need to, at minimum, do an if function for the temperature. If this works I can add others for words like cloudy and sunny later. Or possibly go straight to the description - let’s see what the options there are.
The clouds section has a percentage, and 0% is bright whereas 100% is completely overcast, and London can go from one to the other easily. If weather.main.temp is the temperature than weather.main.clouds must be the cloud cover. No, took a couple of goes and it turns out it’s weather.clouds.all
C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\node-weather>node index.js
(What showed up in command prompt)
But I need that to turn out an image, and not just one image, but one of several based on variable cloud cover levels.
I’ve experimented with the yargs thing, and, as instructed, used it to create a variable for any city. That works. For example:
C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\node-weather>node index.js -c Boston
It's 90 percent cloudy in Boston!
C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\node-weather>
I’ve been playing around and I can get it to say various things about the weather:
C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\node-weather>node index.js
It's 92 percent cloudy, 71 percent humid, and 9.12 degrees in London!
C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\node-weather>
But I still can’t work out how to get those numbers to show different results.
After another few hours (hah) I’ve discovered that I simply can’t use this node.js script via a website, only on my command line. But I also can’t view images via my command line. So how do I use “translate data from input into visual element?”)
I’m trying to install browserify to sort of convert my node.js into javascript that can be used in a browser. Has it worked?
No. The resulting bundle.js appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with the file I created.
Ideas: If I got this to work in javascript instead, I could also do it with the brightness of the image coming from the cloudiness and saturation coming from the temperature. Perhaps make a different picture, like a sky, in pixelart and use that as a reference for css coding. I could add time of day via a separate command and use that for hue. Could add sound for rain, wind, sunny day etc.
I could include the parameters for sunrise and sunset and simulate the sky further.
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