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README.md

Project 4: Web API Client

What You'll Build

A command-line tool that fetches and displays data from a public web API. You'll build a weather lookup tool using the free Open-Meteo API (no API key required) that shows current weather for any city.

Skills Practiced

  • HTTP requests with the requests library
  • JSON parsing and data extraction
  • argparse for CLI interface
  • Error handling (network errors, bad responses, missing data)
  • String formatting for readable output

Features to Implement

Core (start here)

  1. Accept a city name from the command line
  2. Look up the city's coordinates using the Open-Meteo geocoding API
  3. Fetch current weather data for those coordinates
  4. Display temperature, wind speed, and weather description
  5. Handle errors gracefully (city not found, network issues)

Stretch Goals (once the core works)

  • Add a --forecast flag to show multi-day forecast
  • Add --units flag (metric/imperial)
  • Cache results to avoid repeated API calls
  • Support multiple cities in one command
  • Add colored output based on temperature

Example Session

$ python3 starter.py London
Weather for London, United Kingdom:
  Temperature:  12.3°C
  Wind speed:   15.2 km/h
  Condition:    Partly cloudy

$ python3 starter.py "New York"
Weather for New York, United States:
  Temperature:  8.1°C
  Wind speed:   22.4 km/h
  Condition:    Overcast

$ python3 starter.py Nowhereville
Error: City 'Nowhereville' not found.

APIs Used

Both APIs are free and require no API key.

Geocoding (city name → coordinates):

https://geocoding-api.open-meteo.com/v1/search?name=London&count=1

Weather (coordinates → current weather):

https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast?latitude=51.5&longitude=-0.1&current_weather=true

Hints

  • requests.get(url, params={...}) is cleaner than building URL strings manually
  • Check response.status_code or use response.raise_for_status()
  • The geocoding API returns a results list — take the first match
  • Weather codes (0=clear, 1-3=cloudy, etc.) need to be mapped to descriptions
  • Use try/except requests.RequestException for network errors
  • Install requests with: pip install requests

Files

  • starter.py — skeleton code with function signatures and structure
  • solution.py — complete working implementation