Environment Canada integration - 2021.11 onwards

[ValMarDav]

Hi, There will be a change in early 2024 to get the forecasts. Weather.xxxx entities will no longer provide forecasts automatically, you must request them. Here’s how I do it.

template: 
          
  - trigger:
      - platform: time_pattern
        hours: /1
    action:
      - service: weather.get_forecasts
        data:
          type: hourly
        target:
          entity_id: weather.shawinigan
        response_variable: previsionshoraires
    sensor:
      - name: Prévisions météorologiques horaires
        unique_id: previsions_meteorologiques_horaires
        state: "{{ now().isoformat() }}"
        icon: mdi:hours-24
        attributes:
          forecast: "{{ previsionshoraires.forecast }}"

This will create a sensor under the name sensor.previsions_meteorologiques_horaires which will contain the forecasts.

Then you can get the forecasts like this.

template:
  - sensor:

    - name: 'def_previsions_temperature_h0'
      unique_id: 'def_previsions_temperature_h0'
      unit_of_measurement: "°C"
      state: "{{ state_attr('sensor.previsions_meteorologiques_horaires', 'forecast')[0].temperature }}"
      
    - name: 'def_previsions_temperature_h1'
      unique_id: 'def_previsions_temperature_h1'
      unit_of_measurement: "°C"
      state: "{{ state_attr('sensor.previsions_meteorologiques_horaires', 'forecast')[1].temperature }}"
  
    - name: 'def_previsions_temperature_h2'
      unique_id: 'def_previsions_temperature_h2'
      unit_of_measurement: "°C"
      state: "{{ state_attr('sensor.previsions_meteorologiques_horaires', 'forecast')[2].temperature }}"
  
    - name: 'def_previsions_temperature_h3'
      unique_id: 'def_previsions_temperature_h3'
      unit_of_measurement: "°C"
      state: "{{ state_attr('sensor.previsions_meteorologiques_horaires', 'forecast')[3].temperature }}"
  
    - name: 'def_previsions_temperature_h4'
      unique_id: 'def_previsions_temperature_h4'
      unit_of_measurement: "°C"
      state: "{{ state_attr('sensor.previsions_meteorologiques_horaires', 'forecast')[4].temperature }}"

    - name: 'def_previsions_temperature_h5'
      unique_id: 'def_previsions_temperature_h5'
      unit_of_measurement: "°C"
      state: "{{ state_attr('sensor.previsions_meteorologiques_horaires', 'forecast')[5].temperature }}"
      

[JackJackattack4]

Tried to extract the hourly weather forecast with your code above @ValMarDav. I could not make it work. I believe there is a difference in the data contained depending on the weather station I use (Sherbrooke).

Here is what I believe is the entity from Environment Canada that contains the best forecast information.

I placed the following code into the “template” section of my configuration.yaml.

• trigger:
  • platform: time_pattern
    hours: /1
    action:
  • service: weather.get_forecasts
    data:
    type: hourly
    target:
    entity_id: weather.sherbrooke_previsions
    response_variable: previsionshoraires
    sensor:
  • name: Prévisions météorologiques horaires
    unique_id: previsions_meteorologiques_horaires
    state: “{{ now().isoformat() }}”
    icon: mdi:hours-24
    attributes:
    forecast: “{{ previsionshoraires.forecast }}”

It creates the entity but it does not contain the forecast, see below:

I believe the issue lies within the data that is available from Environment Canada. I don’t see the hourly forecast, so I can’t extract it.

Does someone have a clue how to get the hourly temperature forecast out?

[ValMarDav]

Hi, What I published 6 days ago, no longer works because they have again changed the response of the service in the publication of core 2023.12. Now the result contains the name of the Weather entity because you can specify several in the same query. So to read the forecasts, you must specify which weather entity you want to read from. Here is the new way to create the template.

template:

# Obtenir les pévisions horaires
          
  - trigger:
      - platform: time_pattern
        hours: /1
    action:
      - service: weather.get_forecasts
        data:
          type: hourly
        target:
          entity_id: weather.shawinigan
        response_variable: previsionshoraires
    sensor:
      - name: Prévisions météorologiques horaires
        unique_id: previsions_meteorologiques_horaires
        state: "{{ now().isoformat() }}"
        icon: mdi:hours-24
        attributes:
          forecast: "{{ previsionshoraires['weather.shawinigan'].forecast }}" 

[JackJackattack4]

@ValMarDav

    sensor:
      - name: Prévisions météorologiques horaires
        unique_id: previsions_meteorologiques_horaires
        state: "{{ now().isoformat() }}"
        icon: mdi:hours-24
        attributes:
          forecast: "{{ previsionshoraires['weather.shawinigan'].forecast }}" 

Hello,

It does work!

Thank you/merci.

My gosh, if they change the way the data is provided so often, how are you keeping track of this?

[Montreal666]

Does the integration provide a way to extract the full warning details:

As it only seem to provide the title/summary:

I don’t mind polling the data manually/externally and create a sensor but just want to check if someone figured out a way to achieve this before reinventing the wheel.

Thx!

[pcwii]

I don’t think this is built in. I did notice that there was an RSS feed link provide by environment Canada on the bottom of the warning (not shown in your picture). I am not sure if the HA RSS feed reader would create a sensor for this. I will try at my next opportunity.

Feedreader

[Montreal666]

Thanks, will try with the RSS feed. Will report back if positive.
Cheers

[michaeldavie]

The integration used to pull the full alert data from the ECCC website using HTML scraping, since it’s not included in the XML data. However, HA took a hard stance against HTML scraping so I had to remove this functionality. I haven’t looked at this in a while, so if anyone has any suggestions I’m all ears!

[pcwii]

I appreciate that scraping is no longer a part of the integration, but scraping is still an available option with HA. I am aware that EC could change their website at any time and thus break this scraping…But do you have any details on how we could scrape the website ourselves based on the Scrape integration that exists? No warranty is expected or implied by anything you can provide.

[michaeldavie]

The code I was using to get the HTML is here:

michaeldavie/env_canada/blob/f3147825e25b9a4e4db8aebf682f69feacefd29e/env_canada/ec_data.py#L288

This was quite a while ago, but I don’t think they’ve changed the site much.

[Pepe_Le_Pew]

I cannot figure out how to turn on hourly forecasts again, I just had a SD card die and I am rebuilding. Hourly forecasts, were those lost when scraping was banned?

Is it possible to put the full version of Environment Canada addon into HACS with all it’s webscraping glory?

[pcwii]

@michaeldavie, I may have mentioned this before but would it be possible to have the summary added to an attribute so that it is not truncated by the 255 character limit?

[gwww (Glenn Waters)]

The limit is imposed by Home Assistant. The max length of a field is 255.

[pcwii]

This limit does not exist for sensor attributes, so the idea would be to move the summary to an attribute field to overcome the 255 character limit.

[gwww (Glenn Waters)]

I created a method to put EC notifications into a markdown card a while back (Environment Canada integration - 2021.11 onwards - #122 by gwww). I’m no longer using the markdown card and have switched to using Mushroom Template Badges. To do this I created a new template sensor in my templates.yaml file:

- sensor:
    - name: EC Notices
      unique_id: eef5e218-4506-4b49-aba0-134c9e0fc5d8
      state: >
        {% set a = 'sensor.ec_ottawa_' %}
        {% if has_value(a+'watches') %}
          {{ states(a+'watches')|int + states(a+'warnings')|int + states(a+'advisory')|int + states(a+'statements')|int }}
        {% else %}
          {{ None }}
        {% endif %}
      attributes:
        notices: >
          {% set data = namespace(alerts=[]) %}
          {% for item in ['warnings;mdi:alert-octagon;red','watches;mdi:alert;yellow','advisory;mdi:alert-circle;blue','statements;mdi:circle;blue'] %}
            {% set type, icon, colour = item.split(';') %}
            {% set entity = 'sensor.ec_ottawa_' + type %}
            {% for i in ['1','2','3','4'] %}
              {% set alert = state_attr(entity, 'alert_' + i) %}
              {% if not alert %}
                {% break %}
              {% endif %}
              {% set data.alerts = data.alerts + [{'alert': alert, 'type': type, 'time': state_attr(entity, 'alert_time_' + i), 'icon': icon, 'colour': colour}] %}
            {% endfor %}
          {% endfor %}
          {{ data.alerts }}

The state of the sensor is the total number of active notices (warnings + watches + statements + advisory).

The sensor has a single attribute called notices. The value of the attribute is an list ordered from highest severity notice to lowest. Each entry in the list is a dictionary that contains the type of notice, the alert, the time of the alert, an icon to use to display the alert, and lastly the colour to use for the icon.

In the front end I configure Mushroom Template Chips. I use two badges, which means only the first two (and highest level) notices are shown. Here is the YAML for first badge:

type: custom:mushroom-template-badge
content: "{{ state_attr('sensor.ec_notices', 'notices')[0].alert }}"
icon: "{{ state_attr('sensor.ec_notices', 'notices')[0].icon }}"
color: "{{ state_attr('sensor.ec_notices', 'notices')[0].colour }}"
visibility:
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity: sensor.ec_notices
    above: 0
tap_action:
  action: url
  url_path: https://weather.gc.ca/warnings/report_e.html?onrm104=

And for the second badge:

type: custom:mushroom-template-badge
content: "{{ state_attr('sensor.ec_notices', 'notices')[1].alert }}"
icon: "{{ state_attr('sensor.ec_notices', 'notices')[1].icon }}"
color: "{{ state_attr('sensor.ec_notices', 'notices')[1].colour }}"
visibility:
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity: sensor.ec_notices
    above: 1
tap_action:
  action: url
  url_path: https://weather.gc.ca/warnings/report_e.html?onrm104=

Hope its useful to someone!

[Montreal666]

Not sure if there is still active development on this one but just in case:
the sensor.xxxxx.summary is currently truncated at 255 characters (HA sensor limitation). Would it be possible to create an attribute (not limited to 255 characters) under the same sensor, something like “details” or “full” and put the full/untruncated version of the summary there? That would be useful. Thanks

[gwww (Glenn Waters)]

That is planned! Well, something is planned, unsure of the design at the moment. It could be a change to the current sensor, a new sensor, or a new action similar to get_forecast.

[Montreal666]

Thank you!
Maybe this is also planned but adding weather alerts & details would be great as well. I did manage to do it outside of this integration but would be nice to have everything under the same integration.

[gwww (Glenn Waters)]

Alerts are already part of the integration. Can you say more about what is missing?

[Montreal666]

This: Weather Information - Environment Canada

The full version with all details and untruncated text.