METAR and TAF By Email (Experimental)
Example of a request being sent from a mobile phone. This would return METARs and TAFs for Geneva and Cannes during the next three hours.
By sending an email to wx@navlost.eu it is possible to schedule retrieval of METAR and TAF reports for any location in the NWX database for a short period of time in the future. An email is sent every time that a new report is received for any of the designated stations during the period of validity of your request (three hours from the time of reception of your email, by default.)
Applications
- Users of mobile devices (telephones, PDAs, Blackberrys, etc.) may find it easier and/or cheaper to access this service via a email rather than the more screen-oriented web interface.
- Users with slow, unreliable, or otherwise limited connectivity may benefit from a "push" service, in which their data is waiting for them as they connect, rather than they having to go fetch it.
- Finally, the responses follow a defined format with unobtrusive markers, making them suitable for automatic processing in addition to direct human consumption. This means that application developers can choose to use email rather than or in addition to the web as their access mechanism to the NWX METAR/TAF service.
How to Use It (Quick Guide)
Send an email to wx@navlost.eu with the words METAR and/or TAF in the subject line. In the body of the message, enter the ICAO codes for the stations you are interested on, separated by spaces or linefeeds.
For the full instructions, send an email to the above address with HELP on the subject line and wait up to ten minutes for a reply with a comprehensive description of the system. Please note that this is at an early experimental stage and under active development so some of the functionality described in the help text may not be yet available or may not perform as described.
Privacy Considerations
If you send a valid request other than HELP or CANCEL, you email
address will be stored in a database along with the details of your
request. This is a vital part of the service, otherwise the server
would not know where to send its replies! Some time after your
request has expired, your email address is replaced by its
SHA-1
cryptographic hash, meaning that it is no longer possible to
recover the email address associated with a particular request;
on the other hand given an email address, it will be possible to tell with
a high degree of certainty which requests are related to it. The
reason for having this functionality is twofold: on one hand the system needs to
know whether it's seen a particular address before in order to
decide, e.g., whether to send an error message if a user makes an
invalid request (first time users do not get error reports, due to
spam considerations). The second reason for this design requirement
is to provide a degree of traceability should it be needed for
legal purposes or particularly, in the event of an accident or
incident investigation. The design of the system provides for the
recording of which information has been requested and what has
actually been sent–this makes the investigators' lives easier
and potentially provides you with an "alibi" should you ever need it!
Of course, as with the NWX service at large, you can still exercise your
data protection rights
under French law 78-17 (1978) at any time, by sending a request
via this site's contact form.
For Further Information
If you require any further information about this service, or have any comments or suggestions, you may use the contact form to reach me.