Dayfile.txt: Difference between revisions

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== Viewing or Editing the daily log within Cumulus ==
ToThe viewlast thecommand whole daily log use thein ''dayfile.txt'Edit''' commandmenu inis '''Edit'dayfile.txt'' [[Cumulus_Screenshots#File.2FEdit.2FHelp_Menu |menu]]. '''This is how you view, and optionally edit,''' the dayfile.txt from within Cumulus. This is a text editor, so you can type new values over those currently displayed, and works best when at full screen.
Click the ''Help'' button for detailed instructions. Cumulus Help is comprehensive.
 
If a particular day does not exist as a row on the daily summary log, then 'create missing' can search the observations in the relevant monthly log, and calculate approximate highs, lows and totals to insert as an exta row in the daily summary log. These are approximate because the actual highs and lows for that day are quite likely to have occured at moments inbetween those that were logged.
== Using the daily summary log on your web-site ==
 
=== Editing daily summary in Cumulus ===
If you upload the file to your web site, then see [[AnnualDataSummary]] for information about one of the ways to show values from this file. Search the Cumulus support forum to see ways that others extract information from dayfile.txt to display on their web page a set of fields similar to those shown for 'Yesterday' web page for other dates in the past. Other people use dayfile.txt for updating databases stored on their web sites so that SQL can be used to display all sorts of statistics, again postings on the forum discuss this.
 
If there is an error in ''dayfile.txt'', then it is most likely to be found when you are viewing its data on one of the screens for editing the monthly, annual or all-time extremes. Cumulus will illuminate its ''Error'' light if it finds an error in such cases and tell you the line/row number of the first found error, together with some details of the error it found. For example, if a row is blank, a row is duplicated, a field is corrupted, a field does not have an acceptable value, or a field is missing so subsequent fields are to the left of where they should be.
==Viewing summary figures for a month or period==
To view a summary of dayfile.txt for a month, calendar year or selected period, use ''This month'' (choose any month, default is month from your computer system date), ''This year'' (choose any year, default is year from your computer system date), or ''This period'' (choose any start and end dates, default is yesterday calculated from your computer system date), within the '''View''' [[Cumulus_Screenshots#File.2FEdit.2FHelp_Menu|menu]].
*Remember the daily summary log has its records based on rollover to rollover days.
*In all cases they exclude the today details that are not stored on dayfile.txt until the end of day rollover.
*If you use 9am or 10am rollover, and choose '''View''' ''This period'' between midnight and your 9am/10am rollover any day your latest meteorological day is the yesterday in terms of your computer system date that 'This period' tries to display as its default day, and the display will initially appear blank.
*If you use 9am or 10am rollover, and choose '''View''' ''This month'' before your 9am/10am rollover on the first day of a new calendar month your latest meteorological month is different to your computer system month 'This month' tries to display as its default month, and the display will initially appear blank.
 
You can use this editor toas follows:
Most of the displayed results are for observations in the daily summary log, but a few parameters are not in that log and are derived from the monthly logs (e.g. average wind speed) or the weather diary (e.g. count of days with snow lying).
*use '''insert''' key to add one or more missing rows (complete days) manually,
*On the screen displayed after selecting ''This month'', you can change the month and year required using the options at bottom left, click ''Update Display'' and the revised summary will be calculated.
*correct individual values by overtyping,
*On the screen displayed after selecting ''This year'', you can change the year required using the options at bottom left, click ''Update Display'' and the revised summary will be calculated.
*use '''delete''' key to remove an entire day (e.g. if you get a 'duplicate' error message),
*On the screen displayed after selecting ''This period'', you can change the start date and end date then click ''Update Display'' to get the equivalent calculations displayed for part of a month or any other period.
*use '''Create missing''' button to insert missing rows (complete days) by reading from [[Monthly_log_files]] and automatically calculating the best approximations for each field for those missing days.
 
If you do have a 'duplicate' error, you need to decide which row to ''delete'', and whether to copy any values from that row into the row you are keeping to ensure the correct extremes are retained.
 
As an alternative to manual line ''insert'', you may wish to use a procedure for importing, and processing, pre-Cumulus observations into [[Monthly_log_files]]. Once there is data for required days in monthly logs, ''Create missing'' can insert the new rows for those days previously missing in dayfile.txt.
Note differences between observation reports on View screens and those available as web tags.
*Date and time stamps:
**The day number shown on screen is the meteorological day (changing at rollover and that may be at midnight or 9am/10am) as that date appears in dayfile.txt;
**A time-stamp (with time and date) given in a web tag quotes a calendar date (always changing at midnight).
*Reported statistics example:
**The screen shows total number of dry or wet days in the month;
**The web tags report longest dry or wet period in the month.
 
For ''Create missing'' a list of inserted records is produced in [[dayfileeditlog.txt]]. If just some fields are wrong in a particular row (meteorological day) on day file, then there is a [[Monthly_log_files#Using_Monthly_logs_to_deal_with_shorter_.28or_incomplete.29_dayfile.txt_records_for_particular_dates | workaround]] as at all current versions (up to 1.9.4) you can only use 'Create missing' to read from the [[Monthly_log_files]] if the whole day (a row starting with a date) is missing in ''dayfile.txt''.
== Dealing with rogue measurements ==
=== Read this if you are not using the latest release of Cumulus ===
 
'''Note for obsolete version 1.9.0 to 1.9.3:''' There is a bug in these versions in that 'Create missing' inserts 'heating and cooling degree day' values the wrong way round.
 
'''Note for obsolete version 1.9.3 only:''' Create missing might in some cases be affected by a bug in 1.9.3 that can cause incorrect date order for records (dayfile.txt uses dd/mm/yy or dd-mm-yy and all records should be in ascending chronological order)
 
There are no known bugs in version 1.9.4 build 1086, the current release at time of writing.
=== Dealing with rogue measurements ===
Cumulus provides via '''Configuration''' menu ''Calibration'' screen the ability to screen out spikes (magnitude of differences between one value read and next value read) in data picked up from your weather station. See Cumulus help screen if you decide to use that to cope with some spikes.
 
If you discover a rogue measurement (perhaps the wind affected your tiping bucket rain gauge or your weather station just reported a corrupted value), on the day it occured, see [[today.ini]] or a [[FAQ]] for further advice. In general, you need to stop Cumulus, edit the monthly log row containing the dodgy values, edit 'today.ini' and possibly other '.ini' files, looking up the logs that show the updates with previous high or low.
 
If the rogue measurement is discovered some days after it occured, then in many cases it will have affected your highs and lows for the current month, month-by-month, current year, and/or all-time. As your first step you should update the appropriate field in the row for the affected date in dayfile.txt. Once ''dayfile.txt is correct'' the Cumulus editors will allow you to:
Ideally, you will subsequently try to edit the rogue data for the particular time it was logged; see [[Monthly_log_files#Correcting_any_logged_data_problems]], but correcting the daily summary in dayfile.txt must always be the priority.
 
== Using the daily summary log on your web-site ==
==Editing in Cumulus==
The last command in '''Edit''' menu is ''dayfile.txt''. This is a text editor, and works best when at full screen.
Click the ''Help'' button for detailed instructions. Cumulus Help is comprehensive.
 
If you upload the file to your web site, then see [[AnnualDataSummary]] for information about one of the ways to show values from this file. Search the Cumulus support forum to see ways that others extract information from dayfile.txt to display on their web page a set of fields similar to those shown for 'Yesterday' web page for other dates in the past. Other people use dayfile.txt for updating databases stored on their web sites so that SQL can be used to display all sorts of statistics, again postings on the forum discuss this.
If there is an error in ''dayfile.txt'', then it is most likely to be found when you are viewing its data on one of the screens for editing the monthly, annual or all-time extremes. Cumulus will illuminate its ''Error'' light if it finds an error in such cases and tell you the line/row number of the first found error, together with some details of the error it found. For example, if a row is blank, a row is duplicated, a field is corrupted, a field does not have an acceptable value, or a field is missing so subsequent fields are to the left of where they should be.
 
==Viewing summary figures for a month or period==
You can use this editor to:
To view a summary of dayfile.txt for a month, calendar year or selected period, use ''This month'' (choose any month, default is month from your computer system date), ''This year'' (choose any year, default is year from your computer system date), or ''This period'' (choose any start and end dates, default is yesterday calculated from your computer system date), within the '''View''' [[Cumulus_Screenshots#File.2FEdit.2FHelp_Menu|menu]].
*correct individual values by overtyping,
*Remember the daily summary log has its records based on rollover to rollover days.
*use '''delete''' key to remove an entire day (e.g. if you get a 'duplicate' error message),
*In all cases they exclude the today details that are not stored on dayfile.txt until the end of day rollover.
*use '''insert''' key to add one or more missing rows (complete days) manually,
*If you use 9am or 10am rollover, and choose '''View''' ''This period'' between midnight and your 9am/10am rollover any day your latest meteorological day is the yesterday in terms of your computer system date that 'This period' tries to display as its default day, and the display will initially appear blank.
*use '''Create missing''' button to insert missing rows (complete days) by reading from [[Monthly_log_files]] and automatically calculating the best approximations for each field for those missing days.
*If you use 9am or 10am rollover, and choose '''View''' ''This month'' before your 9am/10am rollover on the first day of a new calendar month your latest meteorological month is different to your computer system month 'This month' tries to display as its default month, and the display will initially appear blank.
 
Most of the displayed results are for observations in the daily summary log, but a few parameters are not in that log and are derived from the monthly logs (e.g. average wind speed) or the weather diary (e.g. count of days with snow lying).
If you do have a 'duplicate' error, you need to decide which row to ''delete'', and whether to copy any values from that row into the row you are keeping to ensure the correct extremes are retained.
*On the screen displayed after selecting ''This month'', you can change the month and year required using the options at bottom left, click ''Update Display'' and the revised summary will be calculated.
*On the screen displayed after selecting ''This year'', you can change the year required using the options at bottom left, click ''Update Display'' and the revised summary will be calculated.
*On the screen displayed after selecting ''This period'', you can change the start date and end date then click ''Update Display'' to get the equivalent calculations displayed for part of a month or any other period.
 
As an alternative to manual line ''insert'', you may wish to use a procedure for importing, and processing, pre-Cumulus observations into [[Monthly_log_files]]. Once there is data for required days in monthly logs, ''Create missing'' can insert the new rows for those days previously missing in dayfile.txt.
 
Note differences between observation reports on View screens and those available as web tags.
For ''Create missing'' a list of inserted records is produced in [[dayfileeditlog.txt]]. If just some fields are wrong in a particular row (meteorological day) on day file, then there is a [[Monthly_log_files#Using_Monthly_logs_to_deal_with_shorter_.28or_incomplete.29_dayfile.txt_records_for_particular_dates | workaround]] as at all current versions (up to 1.9.4) you can only use 'Create missing' to read from the [[Monthly_log_files]] if the whole day (a row starting with a date) is missing in ''dayfile.txt''.
*Date and time stamps:
**The day number shown on screen is the meteorological day (changing at rollover and that may be at midnight or 9am/10am) as that date appears in dayfile.txt;
**A time-stamp (with time and date) given in a web tag quotes a calendar date (always changing at midnight).
*Reported statistics example:
**The screen shows total number of dry or wet days in the month;
**The web tags report longest dry or wet period in the month.
 
'''Note for obsolete version 1.9.0 to 1.9.3:''' There is a bug in these versions in that 'Create missing' inserts 'heating and cooling degree day' values the wrong way round.
 
'''Note for obsolete version 1.9.3 only:''' Create missing might in some cases be affected by a bug in 1.9.3 that can cause incorrect date order for records (dayfile.txt uses dd/mm/yy or dd-mm-yy and all records should be in ascending chronological order)
 
There are no known bugs in version 1.9.4 build 1086, the current release at time of writing.
 
==Manipulation outside Cumulus==
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