CumulusUtils

Goals

The goal of CumulusUtils (abbr: Cutils) is to facilitate website creation for users of CumulusMX without exposure to coding in e.g. PHP or javascript. Having a meteo-website should not be privileged to users with great IT-skills. Making charts should not be demanding for programming skills in SQL or making it otherwise impossible to create charts without diving deep into the technique involved in CumulusMX (which actually is also the case with SQL).

CumulusUtils positions itself as a configurable application for which the understanding of how to run it and how to configure it is the most important thing to know. For configuration CumulusUtils uses cumulusutils.ini file which resides in the CumulusMX directory. All other files related to CumulusUtils are in the utils directory.

The user is assumed to have basic computer skills and knowledge about the Operating System and directory structure. The user must also be aware of the directory infrastructure of CumulusMX and needs to be aware of the meaning of the terms webroot and FTProot and Working Directory.

The output of CumulusUtils consists of mainly of text files (extension: .txt) which are generated on demand. In Cutils idiom modules. These text files can be incorporated in a website the user has or is making. Ultimately when using the website generator feature, CumulusUtils generates a complete website, uploaded to the user domain and extendable through a user defined menu. When using the Charts Compiler, the user can define his own charts and place the output where he wants just like other modules.

Installation

1. CumulusUtils is available in a distribution which can be downloaded from the forum. In the CumulusMX directory the user must create a directory utils (case dependent) and must copy the files of the distribution (including the subdirectories) to that directory.

1. Then, on the domain for the website, the user needs to make two directories in the webroot: 'lib' and 'css'. In addition the distribution directory CUicons must be copied as a whole - with contents - to the webroot.

1. Updating CumulusUtils is done by completely overwriting the contents of the installation directory utils as if it were an installation. If you want to save the old installation, make a copy of the utils directory.

When installed you are ready to run.

Running CumulusUtils

CumulusUtils runs on any operating system CumulusMX runs on and it MUST run in the CumulusMX directory (as working directory). Running CumulusUtils is done from the commandline in a command window (under any OS).

CumulusUtils takes one or more commandline parameters (in short: commands) and must be like (square brackets means: optional):

               utils/bin/cumulusutils.exe [command]

If no commands are given the application responds with:

               CumulusUtils : No Arguments nothing to do. Exiting. See Manual.
               CumulusUtils Usage : utils/bin/cumulusutils.exe [args] (args case independent):
                 utils/bin/cumulusutils.exe
                     [SysInfo] [Forecast] [StationMap] [UserReports]
                     [pwsFWI][Top10][Graphs][Yadr][Records]
                     [NOAA][DayRecords][AirQuality][CompileOnly]
                     | [Thrifty] All
                     | CheckOnly

               OR (in case you use the website generator):
                  utils/bin/cumulusutils.exe [Thrifty] Website

The commands represent the modules the user is asking for to be generated. The output is generated to the utils directory in the CumulusMX directory. When asking for the generation of the website, the user not only gets all modules available but also an index.html file accompanied with some javascript infrastructure. Everything together then is the website which, when copied to the webroot, is ready for use.

Copying to the webroot can also be done automatically through the FTP account of the user, much like CumulusMX itself copies e.g. the realtime.txt or the datafiles to the webroot. The FTP account and domain used are the same as present in the Cumulus.ini configuration.

NOTE: comments to this series of articles is welcome either by direct edit of the article (request an account) or by PM HansR via the forum.