Question

I have this code written up to snatch some weather data and make it available on my website:

if( ! $xml = simplexml_load_file('http://www.weather.gov/data/current_obs/KBED.xml') ) 
{ 
    echo 'unable to load XML file'; 
} 
else 
{ 
  $temp = $xml->temp_f.' Degrees';
  $wind = $xml->wind_mph;
  $wind_dir = $xml->wind_dir;
  $gust = $xml->wind_gust_mph;
  $time = $xml->observation_time;
  $pres = $xml->pressure_in;
  $weath = $xml->weather;
}

And then I just echo them out inside the tags I want them inside. My site is low traffic, but I’m wondering what the “best” way is to do something like this if I were to spike way up in traffic. Should I write those variables I want into a database every hour (when the XML is refreshed) with a cron job to save pinging the server each time, or is that not bad practice? I understand this is a bit subjective, but I have no one else to ask for “best ways”. Thanks!!

Answer 1

• Set up a cron job to periodically fetch the XML document, parse it and store the variables in a database.
• When a page is requested, fetch the variables from the database and render your page.
• It is a good idea to store the timestamp of the last update in the database as well, so that you can tell when the data is stale (because the weather website is down or so).

This setup looks very reasonable to me.