Examples

On this page are several examples of querying the mPING API. For these examples we will use Python and the Requests module. There are many REST client libraries available for many other languages.

Example 1: Get all reports

Here is the code to submit our request.:

import requests
import json

# Set up our request headers indicating we want json returned and include
# our API Key for authorization.
# Make sure to include the word 'Token'. ie 'Token yourreallylongapikeyhere'
reqheaders = {
    'content-type':'application/json',
    'Authorization': 'Token Your_API_Key'
    }

url = 'http://mping.ou.edu/mping/api/v2/reports'
response = requests.get(url,headers=reqheaders)

Now we can check the status code and inspect the results. If request is successful call json() on the response object to decode the json response.:

if response.status_code != 200:
    print 'Request Failed with status code %i' % response.status_code
else:
    print 'Request Successful'
    data = response.json()
    # Pretty print the data
    print json.dumps(data,indent=4)

Here is the example print output:

Request Successful

{
    "count": 258,
    "next": "http://mping.ou.edu/mping/api/v2/reports?page=2",
    "previous": null,
    "results": [
        {
            "id": 66681,
            "obtime": "2013-02-12T09:27:00Z",
            "category": "Rain/Snow",
            "description": "Rain",
            "description_id": 3,
            "geom": {
                "type": "Point",
                "coordinates": [
                    -97.1462239,
                    33.1970531
                ]
            }
        },
        {
            "id": 66682,
            "obtime": "2013-02-12T09:42:00Z",
            "category": "Rain/Snow",
            "description": "Mixed Ice Pellets and Snow",
            "description_id": 10,
            "geom": {
                "type": "Point",
                "coordinates": [
                    -101.86909,
                    33.50854
                ]
            }
        },
        {
            "id": 66683,
            "obtime": "2013-02-12T09:29:00Z",
            "category": "Rain/Snow",
            "description": "Sleet/Ice Pellets",
            "description_id": 7,
            "geom": {
                "type": "Point",
                "coordinates": [
                    -101.8621469,
                    35.14763472
                ]
            }
        },
        {
            "id": 66684,
            "obtime": "2013-02-12T09:48:00Z",
            "category": "Rain/Snow",
            "description": "Drizzle",
            "description_id": 5,
            "geom": {
                "type": "Point",
                "coordinates": [
                    -101.86924,
                    33.50853
                ]
            }
        },

Example 2: Filter by Category

We will now make a similar request but this time we will add a query parameter to filter on Hail reports only:

import requests
import json

# Make sure to include the word 'Token'. ie 'Token yourreallylongapikeyhere'
reqheaders = {
    'content-type':'application/json',
    'Authorization': 'Token Your_API_Key'
    }

reqparams = {
    'category':'Hail'
}

url = 'http://mping.ou.edu/mping/api/v2/reports'
response = requests.get(url, params=reqparams, headers=reqheaders)

The only difference from the first example is the reqparams we have added to the request. Let’s print out the url to see what this looks like.:

print response.url

http://mping.ou.edu/mping/api/v2/reports?category=Hail

Notice it added on ?category=Hail to the end of the url.