When adding WeatherBlox views to your website, they will make calls to the Aeris API and/or Aeris Maps Platform (AMP) to obtain the required weather information. Since WeatherBlox views utilize your Aeris account for requesting data, it's important to understand that WeatherBlox view requests will also count against your maximum daily access for our data and/or maps API and that the total accesses varies depending on the view requested.
The documentation for each weather view and layout will provide information on the number of data and/or map API accesses that will be used to request and render the necessary weather data. In general, each weather view uses 1-3 data API calls to fetch and display the weather information, whereas layouts can use considerably more as they are comprised of multiple individual views.
While the two implementation methods for WeatherBlox, client-side and server-side, generally consume the same number of hits for weather data (except for AMP requests which varies), caching these requests can greatly reduce the total number of accesses required that count against your daily allowed maximum for your account.
When integrating WeatherBlox via JavaScript, all data API requests are made from the web visitor's browser. Therefore, each time a page containing WeatherBlox views is requested by a user, it will count as additional API calls. The exception to this would be any browser-based caching that is enabled, which would then cache each API request based on those requests' cache headers.
For example, if you include a single Advisories view that will consume 1 weather API access per page view. So if this page receives 10,000 views throughout the day, then there would be 10,000 API accesses against your account's limit.
Alternatively, if you include the Observations view, then 1 to 3 API accesses will be used per page view depending on options (e.g. having threats and advisories enabled). If this page receives 10,000 views per day, then up to 30,000 daily accesses to the Aeris API will be required from your account.
When integrating WeatherBlox on a high-volume site, your account's total API accesses against your daily limit can quickly get consumed. In such cases, using the WeatherBlox API instead of the JavaScript method may be the preferred solution. While requiring additional development efforts, you have greater control over caching responses and views, potentially lowering total usage significantly.
For example, if your website caters to a single location and you have 1,000 views of a page containing the Observations view in one hour, the following compares how caching WeatherBlox API responses significantly lowers your accesses usage:
Heads up! When using the WeatherBlox API method, each call to the WeatherBlox API will count as a single access to the Aeris API. This is in addition to the data API calls the weather data requests required by the view.
The result is that using the WeatherBlox API integration method can drastically lower the total accesses used by your account.
Many of the WeatherBlox views and layouts include weather maps utilizing the Aeris Mapping Platform (AMP). The total AMP map units consumed by these views will be highly dependent upon the configuration of the views, such as the size of the maps, total layers, and animation playback. Review the map units documentation for more information on calculating AMP usage.
Last modified: June 19, 2017