Weather API

• Intro
• Installation
• Usage

Overview

Project from roadmap.sh built using Go.

This API is just a simple API wrapper that fetches weather data from an external source.

As a prerequisite, sign up for a redis account to use as a cache for each request. Additionally, create an account with visual crossing to obtain an API key for the weather data. Both of these services are free. The rate limit is set to a maximum of 5 requests per 10 minutes per IP address. If no requests are made from the same IP address within 30 minutes, the rate limit counter will be reset.

Installation

1. Clone this repo
2. Create environment variables or use a .env file (must be placed in configs folder). Edit the configs.json.

redis_username=
redis_password=
visual_crossing_api_key=

{
  "Address": "0.0.0.0:8080",
  "ReadTimeout": 200, // seconds
  "WriteTimeout": 600, // seconds
  "CacheExpire": 30 // minutes
}

4. run project from the project's root directory: go run ./cmd/myweather-api/main.go

Build

Docker

docker build -t myweather-api .
docker run -p <port1>:<port2> myweather-api

Note: The port2 is the port from config.json, which is needed to expose the port from the docker container.

Make

Builds executable and copies all configs into the bin directory

make all

OPTIONAL: It is possible to build this application for a Raspberry Pi 5 by doing the command: make build-raspdist. This will create the executable suitable for the device.

Usage

Once the application is running, perform a GET request on the endpoint.

curl http://localhost:8080/api/v1/weather?city=London

• Response Format: This will return weather information for the city of London in JSON format.

Lessons

Listed below are topics and skills I learned from this:

• Learned how to structure API
  • HTTP handling and routing 1
  • Utilizing environment variables to protect sensitive information such as keys and account info.
• Use Redis for caching
• Rate limiting 2
• Build and deploy
  • Docker 3 4
  • Makefile 5