Get BBC Weather Alerts with Google Scripts

Somnath Rakshit has written a Google Script that sends weather forecast of your city to your cell phone via SMS twice every day, once in the morning and in the evening.

The weather information is scraped from the BBC Weather website.

The text messages are sent via Google Calendar so make sure that you mobile number is linked to your Google Calendar and that you have entered the correct time zone in the calendar settings.

function Start() {
  var link = 'http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/YOUR_CITY_CODE';

  // Calcutta, India:  'http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/1275004';
  // New Delhi, India: 'http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/1261481';
  // Kansas, USA:      'http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/4393217';
  // Tokyo, Japan:     'http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/1850147';

  link = link.substring(link.indexOf('r/') + 2, link.length);
  var url = 'http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/weather/feeds/en/' + link + '/3dayforecast.rss';
  var xml = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url).getContentText();

  xml = xml.substring(xml.indexOf('</image>') + 34, xml.length);
  xml = xml.substring(0, xml.indexOf('</title>'));

  for (var i = 0; i < 4; i++) xml = xml.replace('°', ' ');

  var forecast = xml.substring(0, xml.indexOf(','));

  var c = xml.replace('imum Temperature', '');
  c = c.replace('imum Temperature', '');
  var output = c.substring(c.indexOf('day:') + 5, c.length);

  var now = new Date().getTime();
  CalendarApp.createEvent(output, new Date(now + 60000), new Date(now + 60000)).addSmsReminder(0);
}

function Install() {
  ScriptApp.newTrigger('Start').timeBased().atHour(5).everyDays(1).create();

  ScriptApp.newTrigger('Start').timeBased().atHour(18).everyDays(1).create();
}

function Uninstall() {
  var triggers = ScriptApp.getScriptTriggers();
  for (var i = 0; i < triggers.length; i++) {
    ScriptApp.deleteTrigger(triggers[i]);
  }
}
Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

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