Show weather information

In this tutorial we are going to make a box displaying weather data and icons, fetched from an RSS feed.

Step by step

Setting up Dise RSS Reader

For this tutorial, we are using a weather feed offered by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, information provided at [1].

• In Dise RSS Reader, click Add to enter a new feed.
• in the feed settings window, enter The name Stockholm and the URL http://www.yr.no/place/Sweden/Stockholm/Stockholm/forecast.rss. Under Output file, enter C:\rss\weather\stockholm.txt.
• Un-check the box Include description of feed (at the top)
• We only want the 5 first items, so tick the checkbox Maximum numbers of news items to include and enter 5.
• In the tab field in the top right corner, scroll until you reach the tab Download enclosed files.
• Tick the Download enclosed files (images) box and browse to the directory C:\rss\weather.
• Under Main part of file name enter Weather and under Default file if a file could not be downloaded enter Default.png.

Designing the information box

• In Dise Composer, create a new Dise Movie.
• Insert a table object.
• Select the Table format tab and enter 5 under Rows and 2 under Columns.
• Select the Data tab and click the Connect data button.
• Browse to the file C:\rss\weather\stockholm.txt downloaded by RSS Reader.
• Tick the Row procesing checkbox and enter the values From Row: 1, To Row: 5.
• Tick the Column procesing checkbox and enter the values From Column: 1, To Column: 2 and under Field delimiter: - (dash).

• Select the Options tab, right-click and select all in the preview area and tick the Word break checkbox.
• Select the Text tab and make format changes to fit. I chose to make the first column bold and used the font Palatino Linotype with size 12.
• Now you will have something like this:
  

• For the icons, insert a new table object.
• Select the Table format tab and enter 5 under Rows and 1 under Columns.
• Select the images tab.
• Select the first cell and tick the Image cell (text is filename) checkbox.
• Click browse and select the file C:\rss\weather\Weather1.image downloaded by RSS Reader.
• Tick the Use image alpha checkbox.
• Repeat the last three steps for the rest of the cells.
• Select the two table objects by holding shift and clicking.
• Align them to top by clicking the button.
• Make them the same height by holding shift and click the button.
• Insert a white rounded rectangle shape.
• Select it, right-click and select Edit Object settings, then go to the Transparency tab in the Object settings tool.
• Tick the Gradient transparency checkbox and press the down arrow in the transparency direction tool.
• Place the weather information on the rounded rectangle.

Result