How to use the Frogcast weather REST API?

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As mentioned in our previous articles, accessing reliable and accurate weather data is essential for many businesses to facilitate their daily operations. Fortunately, our latest technological advancements allow developers to easily and quickly integrate this weather data into their applications using REST API technology.

Théo, our CTO, explains in this article how REST APIs work and how to get started with the Frogcast API.

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What is a REST weather API?

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A REST weather API is an API following the REST semantics, that allows applications to request weather data via HTTP efficiently and standardly through a simple URL address containing a set of parameters.

Overall, the REST weather API acts as an intermediary that retrieves weather data from a server and then seamlessly delivers it into a final application.

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Why use a REST weather API?

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Weather conditions impact numerous sectors such as agriculture, transportation, and construction. Thus, having access to accurate weather data enables informed operational decisions. This is where a weather REST API comes in handy.

It enables application developers and decision support tools to seamlessly integrate weather data into their systems. The REST weather API allows developers to submit API requests to receive weather forecasts for their locations without a graphical interface. They no longer need to collect and process data themselves from various weather organizations through non-unified and not always open-source formats. This saves significant time and ensures access to accurate and updated data.

Using this API offers several advantages:
➡️ Integrating accurate and updated weather data
➡️ Enhancement of application or decision-making tool functionalities
➡️ Improving the user experience by providing all necessary data for managing operations

A RESTful API offers great flexibility. The remote server communicates with your server only upon request, and you only receive the data you need. There's no longer a need to store intermediate data or ensure the provision of data from various existing weather sources, only maintaining access to this API is necessary, greatly simplifying the task for the development. They can the focus on using this weather data for their own business applications.

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Getting started with a REST weather API

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At first glance, using a REST weather API may seem complicated. However, it's relatively simple. Let's see how to get started with the Frogcast API.

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Using the Frogcast API key

To access weather data from Frogcast, you will need an API key. This key is a unique identifier that authenticates the user or application making a request. When you send a request to the Weather API, the key is used to verify your access privileges and track service usage.

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Accessing Your API key

To obtain your Frogcast weather API key, create an account on Frogcast.
Once registered, you can access your API key in your personal account.
Please keep this key confidential. Now that you have your key, you can start querying the Frogcast API and integrate the weather data you need into your applications or decision-making tools.

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How to use a REST weather API?

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Now that you have your API key, it's time to start using the API.
REST APIs offer great versatility, allowing you to request weather data.

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Accessing weather forecasts

The Frogcast API allows you to obtain weather forecasts for the next 15 days. These data are essential for many industries.

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Making API requests to get your data

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Sending a request to the Frogcast weather API is very simple.
If you're already logged in to your account, you can simply open a new tab and enter a URL with the following structure:

Example: https://api.frogcast.com/api/v1/forecast/?latitude=45.05&longitude=5.32&fields=tcc,t2m_p80&horizon=14400&time_step=30&format=json

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Here, you'll get the total cloud cover (tcc) data and the temperature p80 quantile (t2m) for the desired location for the next 10 days with a time step of 30 minutes.

As you can see, the request uses a simple address (https://api.frogcast.com/api/v1/forecast/) to which a set of parameters (some optional) can be associated:
➡️ Latitude/longitude (mandatory)
➡️ Fields (mandatory): the list of weather variables you want (or use a GET request to access the list of available meteorological variables : https://api.frogcast.com/api/v1/allfields/)
➡️ Horizon (optional, default = 21600): forecast horizon in minutes,
➡️ Time_step (optional, default=60): data time step in minutes, available: 1,5,10,15,30,60. An interpolation is performed to go below the hour, we recommend keeping the hour as the working base.
➡️ Format (optional, available default, json, recommended to use json)
➡️ Precision (optional, default = 2 digits)

Of course, for the development of your applications, you do not make calls in your browser; however, the final URL will remain the same, only your credentials will need to be transmitted additionally.


Python code exemple:

import pandas as pd

import requests
headers = {'Authorization':'Token {your token}'}

url = 'https://api.frogcast.com/api/v1/forecast/'

parameters = {'latitude':45.63562,
'longitude': 5.63256,
'time_step':60,
'horizon':2880,
'fields':"ghi"}

api_data = requests.get(url=url,params=parameters,headers=headers).json()

forecast = pd.DataFrame(data=api_data['data'], index=api_data['index'], columns=api_data['columns'])

print(forecast)

We have added in this example the formatting of the data into a dataframe, which is a basic structure for using data in Python.

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API responses

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After sending a request, the API server will respond with a 200 code and data in JSON format organized into three lists: the first containing dates, the second containing weather parameters, and the last containing values. To use this data in your application, you will need to extract the information you need. Many programming languages allow analysis of JSON data, so choose the one that best suits your needs.

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Single API request for all your weather variables

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Now that you know how to use the Frogcast weather API, you can retrieve all the data you need.

Our API offers the advantage of being able to retrieve weather forecasts for all meteorological parameters at your point of interest in a single API request, minimizing the number of API calls you need to make!

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