In this tutorial, you will learn about how to create a GUI Weather App in Python. It uses Open Weather Map API to fetch the latest weather information of cities and places around the globe. Also, we will be implementing the weather app with GUI (Graphical User Interface) rather than the traditional boring ways, which are widely available, showing output in CLI(Command Line Interface).
Code for Weather App in Python – GUI
Without further ado, let’s get right into the code setup for creating our GUI weather app in Python
1. Install and Import Tkinter
We begin with installing the required libraries using the pip package manager. Enter the below commands in your command line or terminal to install the modules.
We need to install:
- Request: to fetch data from API
- Tkinter: to make our Weather app GUI (Graphical User Interface) based.
- DateTime: to change the time from API to a different format
pip install tkinter
pip install datetime
pip install requests
pip install json
After installing the required libraries from the terminal, we now move to our Python file to code. We start with importing the libraries as:
from tkinter import *
import requests
import json
from datetime import datetime
2. Initialize the Tkinter Window
As a next step, we initialize our GUI window using the Tkinter module.
#Initialize Window
root =Tk()
root.geometry("400x400") #size of the window by default
root.resizable(0,0) #to make the window size fixed
#title of our window
root.title("Weather App - AskPython.com")
3. OpenWeatherMap API
In our code, we will be using Open Weather API (free tier) to get the current weather information which is accurate and latest.
- To do so, go to OpenWeatherMap website and create an account.
- After creating your account, go to profile and then “My API keys“.
- This will open a webpage for your API Key, as shown below, copy it for later use in code in the next step.
4. Weather Function
Here, comes the part where we add functionality to our code. This part is the most crucial in getting correct weather information, as this involves fetching data from the API and displaying it in an accurate format.
We code the most important function of this code, which is for displaying weather, we do so as in the code:
city_value = StringVar()
def showWeather():
#Enter you api key, copies from the OpenWeatherMap dashboard
api_key = "eda2b2s6d#sd65f4de7c4b8" #sample API
# Get city name from user from the input field (later in the code)
city_name=city_value.get()
# API url
weather_url = 'http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=' + city_name + '&appid='+api_key
# Get the response from fetched url
response = requests.get(weather_url)
# changing response from json to python readable
weather_info = response.json()
tfield.delete("1.0", "end") #to clear the text field for every new output
#as per API documentation, if the cod is 200, it means that weather data was successfully fetched
if weather_info['cod'] == 200:
kelvin = 273 # value of kelvin
#-----------Storing the fetched values of weather of a city
temp = int(weather_info['main']['temp'] - kelvin) #converting default kelvin value to Celcius
feels_like_temp = int(weather_info['main']['feels_like'] - kelvin)
pressure = weather_info['main']['pressure']
humidity = weather_info['main']['humidity']
wind_speed = weather_info['wind']['speed'] * 3.6
sunrise = weather_info['sys']['sunrise']
sunset = weather_info['sys']['sunset']
timezone = weather_info['timezone']
cloudy = weather_info['clouds']['all']
description = weather_info['weather'][0]['description']
sunrise_time = time_format_for_location(sunrise + timezone)
sunset_time = time_format_for_location(sunset + timezone)
#assigning Values to our weather varaible, to display as output
weather = f"\nWeather of: {city_name}\nTemperature (Celsius): {temp}°\nFeels like in (Celsius): {feels_like_temp}°\nPressure: {pressure} hPa\nHumidity: {humidity}%\nSunrise at {sunrise_time} and Sunset at {sunset_time}\nCloud: {cloudy}%\nInfo: {description}"
else:
weather = f"\n\tWeather for '{city_name}' not found!\n\tKindly Enter valid City Name !!"
tfield.insert(INSERT, weather) #to insert or send value in our Text Field to display output
As a final step to adding functionality, we add a function to change the time format, this function checks for the local time as compared to the UTC(Universal Time Coordinated) in which the API gives the output to the time format as per our location. Ex. UTC to IST.
def time_format_for_location(utc_with_tz):
local_time = datetime.utcfromtimestamp(utc_with_tz)
return local_time.time()
5. Coding the GUI (frontend elements)
We now start to code the elements as per the GUI, for heading, text, labels, buttons, etc.
To start with, we code the text field for the City Name we want the weather for, along with the label to indicate so:
- We use the Label method to generate a label of text to indicate the purpose of the input field for city name.
- Entry method is used to make an entry field for input of city name, to check its weather.
- The textvaraible widget is used to store the inputted value, in the variable named: city_value
- Other than these widgets we have also applied some styling to our code, by font size, color, etc.
city_head= Label(root, text = 'Enter City Name', font = 'Arial 12 bold').pack(pady=10) #to generate label heading
inp_city = Entry(root, textvariable = city_value, width = 24, font='Arial 14 bold').pack() #entry field
We code a Check Weather Button, on which we click to check the weather of the user inputted city:
- We give our button some styling, along with the name – ‘Check Weather’. We use the ‘command‘ widget, which shows what function (here, showWeather function) would run on the click (key press) of the button, as coded in the previous step.
Button(root, command = showWeather, text = "Check Weather", font="Arial 10", bg='lightblue', fg='black', activebackground="teal", padx=5, pady=5 ).pack(pady= 20)
After adding this, we add the output elements in our code. The elements on which our Weather information would be displayed.
- Yet again, we add a label to title our result in the following text box
- To display the output we use a text field, which gets its value, every time the “Check Weather” button is pressed. This envokes the function to check weather info fetched from the API after processing, [output from the showWeather function]
weather_now = Label(root, text = "The Weather is: ", font = 'arial 12 bold').pack(pady=10)
tfield = Text(root, width=46, height=10)
tfield.pack()
On execution of our code, the Tkinter displays this as output:
Final Code for GUI Weather App in Python
from tkinter import *
import requests
import json
from datetime import datetime
#Initialize Window
root =Tk()
root.geometry("400x400") #size of the window by default
root.resizable(0,0) #to make the window size fixed
#title of our window
root.title("Weather App - AskPython.com")
# ----------------------Functions to fetch and display weather info
city_value = StringVar()
def time_format_for_location(utc_with_tz):
local_time = datetime.utcfromtimestamp(utc_with_tz)
return local_time.time()
city_value = StringVar()
def showWeather():
#Enter you api key, copies from the OpenWeatherMap dashboard
api_key = "eda2b2s6d#sd65f4de7c4b8" #sample API
# Get city name from user from the input field (later in the code)
city_name=city_value.get()
# API url
weather_url = 'http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=' + city_name + '&appid='+api_key
# Get the response from fetched url
response = requests.get(weather_url)
# changing response from json to python readable
weather_info = response.json()
tfield.delete("1.0", "end") #to clear the text field for every new output
#as per API documentation, if the cod is 200, it means that weather data was successfully fetched
if weather_info['cod'] == 200:
kelvin = 273 # value of kelvin
#-----------Storing the fetched values of weather of a city
temp = int(weather_info['main']['temp'] - kelvin) #converting default kelvin value to Celcius
feels_like_temp = int(weather_info['main']['feels_like'] - kelvin)
pressure = weather_info['main']['pressure']
humidity = weather_info['main']['humidity']
wind_speed = weather_info['wind']['speed'] * 3.6
sunrise = weather_info['sys']['sunrise']
sunset = weather_info['sys']['sunset']
timezone = weather_info['timezone']
cloudy = weather_info['clouds']['all']
description = weather_info['weather'][0]['description']
sunrise_time = time_format_for_location(sunrise + timezone)
sunset_time = time_format_for_location(sunset + timezone)
#assigning Values to our weather varaible, to display as output
weather = f"\nWeather of: {city_name}\nTemperature (Celsius): {temp}°\nFeels like in (Celsius): {feels_like_temp}°\nPressure: {pressure} hPa\nHumidity: {humidity}%\nSunrise at {sunrise_time} and Sunset at {sunset_time}\nCloud: {cloudy}%\nInfo: {description}"
else:
weather = f"\n\tWeather for '{city_name}' not found!\n\tKindly Enter valid City Name !!"
tfield.insert(INSERT, weather) #to insert or send value in our Text Field to display output
#------------------------------Frontend part of code - Interface
city_head= Label(root, text = 'Enter City Name', font = 'Arial 12 bold').pack(pady=10) #to generate label heading
inp_city = Entry(root, textvariable = city_value, width = 24, font='Arial 14 bold').pack()
Button(root, command = showWeather, text = "Check Weather", font="Arial 10", bg='lightblue', fg='black', activebackground="teal", padx=5, pady=5 ).pack(pady= 20)
#to show output
weather_now = Label(root, text = "The Weather is:", font = 'arial 12 bold').pack(pady=10)
tfield = Text(root, width=46, height=10)
tfield.pack()
root.mainloop()
The Output of the GUI based Weather App is shown below:
Conclusion
That’s it for the tutorial. Hope you have learned well how to make a Weather App in Python and that too with a level up by coding an Interface Based script along with API call (Open Weather Map) and Tkinter.