what does this mean?

[Brian]

If you go to weather.com and get the extended forcast, then right click on a sun or cloud graphic and hit properties, this is the URL. "http://image.weather.com/web/common/please_use_our_XML_feed_instead_of_scraping_this_page/31/"

Scraping this page?

 

[69dodge]

I think they're talking to people who write programs that get weather information from their site . They want programs to get the weather from the XML feed instead of from the web page.

The web page is meant to be displayed in a browser and viewed by a person. The XML feed provides the weather data in a well-defined format that is easier for a program to use.

"Scraping" refers to a program trying to extract and correctly interpret the relevant parts from a possibly ambiguous visual format that was designed to be interpreted by people.

 

[xouper]

69dodge: I think they're talking to people who write programs that get weather information from their site . They want programs to get the weather from the XML feed instead of from the web page.

The web page is meant to be displayed in a browser and viewed by a person. The XML feed provides the weather data in a well-defined format that is easier for a program to use.

"Scraping" refers to a program trying to extract and correctly interpret the relevant parts from a possibly ambiguous visual format that was designed to be interpreted by people.

I concur.