Web tools

This tutorial gives you a short overview on what is made possible in Scilab 6.1, using the new web tools.

We will take a simple example of an web service / API providing Weather Forecast.

What is an API?

This is how weather looks like for human, through a Graphical User Interface (GUI):

This is how weather looks like for a computer, through an Application Programming Interface (API):

First step with web services

The simplest and most common method used to request ressources over the web is called GET.

Simply use the Scilab function http_get to get this file hosted on our website:

https://www.scilab.org/sites/default/files/weather.txt

(it is formatted in the Javascript Object Notation JSON)

temp = http_get("https://www.scilab.org/sites/default/files/weather.txt")
plot(temp.values)
--> temp = http_get("https://www.scilab.org/sites/default/files/weather.txt")
 temp  = 

  type = "temperature"
  unit = "degrees Celcius"
  values = [24,25,28,26,27,24,23,19,18,20,22]

 

Collaborate with colleagues in other languages

Exposing your algorithms through a web service enable to collaborate regardless of the language used behind the server.

In this example, we connect to a Python server implemented with the Flask framework:

testAPI.py (change the extension from txt to py)

To run this code, you will need to install Python & Flask. Then start the server on your localhost (127.0.0.1) on the port 5000

You can view the data served as a JSON, at the following route: http://127.0.0.1:5000/api/weather/

Local or distributed computing

You can perform a simple linear regression locally on the data you gathered:

If you have a Scilab Cloud account, you can perform your compute remotely through our web service offering:

Openweathermap API

 

You can simply test the Openweathermap API by testing the fake data provided by the test URL:

https://samples.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/forecast?lat=0&lon=0&appid=xxx

--> openweathermap = http_get("https://samples.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/forecast?lat=0&lon=0&appid=xxx")
 openweathermap  = 

  cod = "200"
  message = 0.0082
  cnt = 40
  list: [1x40 struct] with fields:
      ["dt", "main", "weather", "clouds", "wind", "rain", "sys", "dt_txt"]
  city: struct with fields:
      id = 1907296
      name = "Tawarano"
      coord: struct with fields:
          lat = 35.0164
          lon = 139.0077
      country = "none"

SheetBest: the best solution to turn your google spreadsheets into JSON APIs

This very simple web service provides a good demonstrator for the new web tools in Scilab 6.1:

https://sheet.best/

We will use our eternal dataset from weather data in France

 

GET

This is how the data structure looks like in the response to the get request:

res  = 

  1x134 struct with fields:
  [
  "numer_sta", "date", "pmer", "dirVent", "VitVent(m/s)", "temp(K)", "PointRosée(K)", "Hum(%)", "typeNuageInf", "typeNuageMid", "TypeNuageHaut", "pressionStation"]

POST

For the POST request, we will simplify our dataset to a new spreadsheet with only one column representing the pressure. (it will be easier to upload a simpler structure with only one field).

We will fit a model on this data and predict the evolution on the next cycle. We will not use a linear regression as it only predict the trend, but we will fit a sine function with the help of a FFT to identify the parameters:

The model fitted here on the red part is: 

y2 = a * cos(2 * %pi * indic * x2) + b

We will compute 23 additional values and upload them through a loop:

We can then verifying by getting the full dataset and plot it that we appended the new rows predicted

Sources:

Now you know how to get weather data as efficiently as batman gets bad guys!