#ICYDK: I was recently looking at weather APIs and was a bit overwhelmed by the number of choices out there. Two of the more popular options I came across are the DarkSky API and ClimaCell’s Micro Weather API. While both deliver all the basic weather parameters I needed, I found several differences between the two. Overall, DarkSky is a good API if you want basic weather data, but it didn’t seem to provide much beyond what I’ve seen in free weather APIs. The ClimaCell Micro Weather API seems to provide much more detailed data and it refreshes every minute with updated data. What I learned from comparing weather APIs is that most APIs that provide data every minute are recycling the same data that was sent in the previous five to twenty minutes. With this in mind, ClimaCell is better for applications where you want to make sure the data is fresh. This is just one of the things I learned when doing my comparisons. For any developer searching for a weather API and feeling overwhelmed by the options, I thought I’d share what I learned about these two APIs.
DarkSky API
First, let’s take a look at the DarkSky API. This API is well known because of the DarkSky app, which has a very friendly user-interface for consumers that makes it simple to understand the forecast for that day. The folks at DarkSky carried over this simplicity in their API in that it is very easy to use and can incorporate a lot of parameters into one call. However, the data itself doesn’t seem to extend too far beyond what you can get in free APIs. Many standard parameters like temperature are delivered in hourly chunks. DarkSky also has a map feature, which is basically a URL that allows you to embed their map into your application. This means you’re tied to their look and feel and if you have a map view in your app, you can’t layer DarkSky data into your map, but have to make users switch over and see a DarkSky map. Overall, a very easy API to use, but lacking some ingredients. https://goo.gl/WAz5Uh #DataIntegration #ML
