weewx-xtide

Configuring weewx-xtide

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The installer seeds an [XTide] section in weewx.conf:

[XTide]
    location = Palo Alto Yacht Harbor, San Francisco Bay, California
    prog = /usr/bin/tide
    days = 7

Option	What it does
location	The tide station, matched by XTide’s own prefix rules. Stations are listed at flaterco.com’s locations page. Any station works, in any timezone — all times are handled in UTC internally and displayed in the server’s local time.
prog	Where the tide program is. The default is /usr/bin/tide for legacy reasons; an XTide built per Installation lands at /usr/local/bin/tide, so set this.
days	How many days of tidal events to keep in the database for $xtide.events() (default 7). The sample report’s graph is not affected: it always shows 30 days.
data_binding	The WeeWX data binding (default xtide_binding, seeded by the installer along with its database, xtide.sdb).

Tide predictions are deterministic, so the extension fetches once at startup and then once per local midnight; events are written to the database at the end of an archive period, and only when they changed.

The sample report

The installer registers XTideReport, which renders the tide page to <weewx-html-directory>/xtide. It is a normal WeeWX report: set HTML_ROOT to move it, enable = false to turn it off, or lang = de (etc.) to translate it — see Translating (i18n). The report runs the tide program itself at report time; it does not read the events database.

$xtide.events() in your own reports

Add user.xtide.XTideVariables to each report that should see tidal events. For example, for the Seasons report (you may need to add both lines if they do not already exist):

[StdReport]
    [[SeasonsReport]]
        [[[CheetahGenerator]]]
            search_list_extensions = user.xtide.XTideVariables

Restart WeeWX, then use the tags — see Tags in your skin.

Troubleshooting

1. Can you run the tide program as the WeeWX user? If not, go no further until you resolve that.

2. Did you forget to add XTideVariables to your report’s search_list_extensions?

3. The extension can be run from the command line to test. Activate the WeeWX virtual environment first, and point PYTHONPATH at WeeWX’s USER_ROOT parent (/home/weewx/bin in these examples) so user.xtide resolves.

   To test running the tide program the way the extension does:

   PYTHONPATH=/home/weewx/bin python3 /home/weewx/bin/user/xtide.py \
       --test-tide-execution \
       --location "Palo Alto Yacht Harbor, San Francisco Bay, California" \
       --prog /usr/local/bin/tide
   

   To test the service as a whole — a full engine run, saving to a temporary sqlite database and reading it back:

   PYTHONPATH=/home/weewx/bin python3 /home/weewx/bin/user/xtide.py \
       --test-service \
       --location "Palo Alto Yacht Harbor, San Francisco Bay, California" \
       --prog /usr/local/bin/tide
   

   To view the tide records in the production database (sqlite only):

   PYTHONPATH=/home/weewx/bin python3 /home/weewx/bin/user/xtide.py \
       --view-events --xtide-database /home/weewx/archive/xtide.sdb
   

   To see all options:

   PYTHONPATH=/home/weewx/bin python3 /home/weewx/bin/user/xtide.py --help
   

4. On a schema mismatch after an upgrade, the extension logs the mismatch and serves nothing. There is no migration: stop WeeWX, delete xtide.sdb, and restart — the database holds only forecasts and rebuilds itself immediately.

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