How to Integrate Weather Forecasts into Your Knack App Using Make
Hey folks, it's Dave Parrish here! I've got another Knack video for you today. But first, let me give you a quick update. I just arrived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico—a beautiful mountain city. I’ll be here for almost three months.
Now, let’s dive into today’s topic. If you're working with Knack, I’m sure you’ve come across situations where you want to enhance your app with more dynamic data. One integration that I recently worked on is weather forecasts. In this post, I’ll walk you through how to integrate weather forecasts into your Knack app using Make (formerly Integromat).
The Use Case: A Weather Integration for Trade Shows
Let me set the stage. I’m working on a complicated app for a company that organizes trade shows all over the country—everything from home expos to senior expos and bridal shows. This app is an all-in-one solution for tracking everything: sales, production, finance, marketing—pretty much every aspect of putting on a show.
Now, my client had a very specific request: they wanted to know the weather leading up to these events. Why? Because bad weather could affect their plans. If a show had to be rescheduled or even canceled, they needed the weather forecast to adjust how they approached production.
At first, we integrated the weather forecast just for the day of the show. Simple, right? But my client didn’t stop there. They wanted a longer forecast—something that could predict the weather for 9, 10, or even 15 days ahead of time. So, we took the next step and started building out a system that would do just that.
The Solution: Using Make to Automate Weather Forecasts
Here’s how we solved it. In this app, we have a field for the show date and a countdown of how many days until the event. Now, the app can show weather forecasts starting 16 days out! Once you hit that 16-day mark, Make (our automation platform) kicks in and starts pulling in the forecast for each of those days.
As the show dates approach, the weather data gets populated, and once the show is over, it falls off the list. So you can always see the upcoming weather forecasts and adjust accordingly. This allows the client to make more informed decisions for their shows.
A Peek Behind the Curtain: The Magic of Make
To make this work, we leveraged Make’s powerful automation capabilities. Make has its own weather app that’s fully supported and maintained. The process starts with a timer. Every day, it checks which shows are 15 days or sooner, grabs the weather forecast for each day, and populates the app accordingly.
Things get a little tricky when you're dealing with multiple days. The position of the events can change, and different days will have different forecasts. But Andy O'Neil (my automation genius friend over at Weblytica) worked his magic to make sure everything runs smoothly. He set up all the behind-the-scenes logic, so it grabs the data and sends it back to Knack, keeping the system fully updated.
Wrapping It Up
Now, I know this might sound a bit complicated—trust me, it was! But the beauty of it is that it’s all automated and it just works. My client can now see weather forecasts for the upcoming shows, 16 days in advance. It’s a huge game-changer for their planning process.
If you're looking to integrate weather forecasts or any other dynamic data into your Knack app, Make is a fantastic tool to help you do that. It’s a little complex under the hood, but with the right setup, it can save you a lot of time and effort.
That’s all I’ve got for today. I hope this was helpful and that you see the potential for this kind of integration in your own apps. As always, feel free to reach out if you’ve got any questions or need help. Thanks for checking it out, and I’ll talk with you soon!
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