4.2. Defining the Simple Weather Project
Before we start customizing this project, let’s take a step back and
talk about the Simple Weather project. What is it? It’s a contrived
example, created to demonstrate some of the features of Maven. It is
an application that is representative of the kind you might need to
build. The Simple Weather application is a basic command-line-driven
application that takes a zip code and retrieves some data from the
Yahoo Weather RSS feed. It then parses the result and prints the
result to standard output.
We chose this example for a number of reasons. First, it is
straightforward. A user supplies input via the command line, the app
takes that zip code, makes a request to Yahoo Weather, parses the
result, and formats some simple data to the screen. This example is a
simple main() function and some supporting classes; there is no
enterprise framework to introduce and explain, just XML parsing and
some logging statements. Second, it gives us a good excuse to
introduce some interesting libraries such as Velocity, Dom4J, and
Log4J. Although this book is focused on Maven, we won’t shy away from
an opportunity to introduce interesting utilities. Lastly, it is an
example that can be introduced, developed, and deployed in a single
chapter.
Before you build this application, you should know something about the
Yahoo Weather RSS feed. To start with, the service is made available
under the following terms:
The feeds are provided free of charge for use by individuals and
nonprofit organizations for personal, noncommercial uses. We ask that
you provide attribution to Yahoo Weather in connection with your use
of the feeds.
In other words, if you are thinking of integrating these feeds into
your commercial web site, think again—this feed is for personal,
noncommercial use. The use we’re encouraging in this chapter is
personal educational use. For more information about these terms of
service, see the Yahoo Weather! API documentation here:
http://developer.yahoo.com/weather/.
