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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

weatherOz 3.0.0

Major release - New forecast functionality, breaking changes to wind data structure, and critical bug fixes

Breaking changes

Wind data structure changed in get_dpird_summaries()

Wind data is now returned in wide format with separate columns for each measurement height instead of long format with a wind_height column.

  • Update code accessing wind columns to use the new _3m or _10m suffixed names
  • Remove references to the wind_height column (no longer exists)
  • Wind data now provides one row per period instead of multiple rows per height

Before (v2.0.2 and earlier):

# multiple rows per station/date
wind_height                    # column indicating 3m or 10m
wind_avg_speed                 # single column
wind_max_speed                 # single column
wind_max_time                  # single column
wind_max_direction_degrees
wind_max_direction_compass_point

After (v3.0.0):

# single row per station/date
wind_avg_speed_3m              # separate column for 3m height
wind_avg_speed_10m             # separate column for 10m height
wind_max_speed_3m
wind_max_speed_10m
wind_max_time_3m
wind_max_time_10m
wind_max_date_3m               # NEW: date component
wind_max_date_10m              # NEW: date component
wind_max_time_of_day_3m        # NEW: time-of-day component
wind_max_time_of_day_10m       # NEW: time-of-day component
wind_max_direction_degrees_3m
wind_max_direction_degrees_10m
wind_max_direction_compass_point_3m
wind_max_direction_compass_point_10m

Agricultural bulletin functions removed

get_ag_bulletin() and parse_ag_bulletin() have now been removed from the package in v3.0.0.

  • These functions were already defunct in v2.x after the BOM agricultural bulletin service was discontinued
  • Removal completes the lifecycle transition from defunct to removed
  • Documentation and vignette references also updated

New features

MET Norway forecast support

  • Added get_metno_forecast() - Retrieves hourly weather forecasts for any Australian location from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (MET Norway) Locationforecast 2.0 API
  • Added get_metno_daily_forecast() - Wrapper function that aggregates hourly forecasts into daily summaries (min/max temperature, total precipitation, average wind speed, etc.)
  • Added helper functions for advanced users:
  • New vignette: “weatherOz for the Locationforecast 2.0 (Norwegian Meteorologisk Institutt)” demonstrating forecast usage and combining historical + forecast data

Bug fixes

Critical: Fixed one-day gap between historical and forecast data

When combining historical data (SILO/DPIRD) with MET Norway forecast data, there was a missing day causing a discontinuous timeline due to a timezone double-conversion bug in metno_resample_data_table().

MET.NO cache and fix

  • Added caching in get_metno_forecast() to reduce repeat calls to MET.NO (session-scoped)
  • Added conditional revalidation using If-Modified-Since when cached entries are stale and Last-Modified is available
  • Added support for using cached payloads on HTTP 304 responses
  • Added optional stale-cache fallback for HTTP 429 responses
  • get_metno_daily_forecast() benefits from hourly cache reuse (built on get_metno_forecast())

Wind data parsing improvements

  • Fixed parsing of wind time columns with mixed date/time formats
  • Added .parse_dpird_time_col() internal helper for robust time parsing
  • Added .widen_wind_height_cols() internal helper for reshaping wind data from long to wide format
  • Wind max time now correctly parsed for both date-only and datetime values
  • Fixed .parse_summary() to combine paginated get_dpird_summaries() responses when DPIRD returns mixed schemas across pages (old and new mixed). Any missing fields are now filled with NA instead of erroring during row binding

Code improvements

Internal function refactoring

Extracted helper functions from get_dpird_summaries() (no user-facing changes):

  • .load_dpird_metadata_file() - Removed 60 lines of duplicated metadata cache loading code
  • .validate_and_expand_dpird_values() - Validates and expands “all” to complete value lists
  • .validate_dpird_interval() - Fuzzy matches intervals and modifies values based on interval constraints
  • .calculate_dpird_request_records() - Calculates expected records and validates date ranges
  • .prepare_wind_time_columns() - Parses wind time columns and derives date/time components

Documentation

  • Added vignette for MET Norway forecast functionality with examples of:
    • Hourly and daily forecasts
    • Combining historical and forecast data
    • Agricultural heat stress event planning
    • Custom temporal aggregations
  • Updated all vignettes to reflect forecast capabilities
  • Improve docs for wind data structure changes

weatherOz 2.0.2

CRAN release: 2025-09-19

CRAN Re-submission - Maintenance release addressing archival issues

Bug fixes

  • Made station count tests more flexible to accommodate natural changes in weather station networks over time, using ranges instead of exact counts.

  • Fixed compatibility with crul 1.6.0 by updating minimum vcr requirement to 2.0.0, resolving VCR cassette testing issues caused by deprecated mock() function.

  • URL updates following DPIRD IT system migration:

    • API endpoints: Maintained on api.agric.wa.gov.au
    • Updated DPIRD API documentation URLs: agric.wa.gov.au/apis/api-terms-and-conditions to dpird.wa.gov.au/online-tools/apis/api-terms-and-conditions/ and agric.wa.gov.au/form/dpird-api-registration to dpird.wa.gov.au/forms/dpird-api-registration/
    • Updated displaced URL: pulseaus.com.au/about/australian-pulse-industry to grainsaustralia.com.au
    • Updated all references in vignettes, README files, and function documentation

Additional fixes and improvements:

  • Addressed CRAN request to “remove the single quotes around every term in the description that is not a package/software/API name” and removed examples for unexported functions.

  • Addressed CRAN URL check issues by updating all redirected links to their new working locations.

  • Updated all man pages with corrected URLs; Fixed all broken links in README and vignettes.

  • Added @importFrom curl directives for all curl functions used in the package to resolve import warnings.

  • Flexible station count testing: Made tests more resilient by using ranges instead of exact station counts.

    • Accommodates natural changes in weather station networks over time
    • Prevents test failures due to minor station count variations

weatherOz 2.0.1

CRAN release: 2025-04-16

Minor changes

  • Updated testthat tests to reflect changes in weather station and BOM Radar imagery availability

Bug fixes

  • get_stations_metadata() fails to fetch data with invalid API key but provided unhelpful error.

  • Added check to query_dpird_api() when using an invalid DPIRD API key (Issue 94).

Breaking changes

  • Functions get_ag_bulletin() and parse_ag_bulletin() have been defunct because the underlying BOM agricultural bulletin service is no longer available. This removal constitutes a breaking change; please update your code accordingly.

  • Documentation has been updated to reflect the removal of the get_ag_bulletin() and parse_ag_bulletin() functions.

  • Tests for the get_ag_bulletin() and parse_ag_bulletin() functions now errors given that the functions are now defunct.

Bug fixes

  • Fixes Issue 90 with the get_dpird_summaries() function where tests had fixed dates and errors were generated. The tests test-get_dpird_summaries.R have been updated to use previous year from the current date and the tests now pass.

  • Fixes other bugs with the find_stations_in() and function where the function would not return the correct number of stations, given recent adjustments to the weather station infrastructure.

Additional fixes and improvements:

  • Re-documented package to reflect changes

  • Updated test vcr cassette/fixtures

  • Updated BOM-related vignette

  • Updated WORDLIST for spelling checks

weatherOz 1.0.0.9000

Bug Fixes

  • Provides useful feedback when users provide a NULL API key value.

  • Fixes Issue 82 where Average wind speed data extracted using get_dpird_summaries() is ranked from lowest to highest and does not match the observation recorded at that time from DPIRD summaries, thanks to @alycest.

  • Fixes Issue 83 where average wind direction data extracted using get_dpird_summaries() do not match the observation average wind direction recorded at that time in DPIRD summaries, thanks to @alycest.

  • Fixes an error in documentation about the number of types of objects accepted by find_stations_in().

  • Fixes a typo in the README that provided incorrect arguments for get_key(), thanks to @johnbaums.

weatherOz 1.0.0

CRAN release: 2024-07-26

Major Changes

  • Addressed comments after initial CRAN submission (reduce file size and update links to packages/function in the documentation).

  • Published manuscript describing package in the Journal of Open Source Software

  • Package was peer reviewed.

  • Changes the name of the function get_station_metadata() to get_stations_metadata() to avoid clashes with {stationaRy}.

  • Adds new functionality, find_stations_in() to assist in finding stations in a bounding box or geospatial polygon.

  • Allows user to pass along a factor as the station_code when requesting weather data. This allows for the use of the metadata returned from get_stations_metadata() to be used directly in queries without changing the class of the station_code column from factor to character.

  • Added functionality to get_station_metadata() so that it returns the metadata for only one station if required, commit.

  • Several enhanced checks for user inputs to ensure that valid requests are made before sending the API queries are now in place.

Bug Fixes

  • find_nearby_stations()

    • Fixes bug where find_forecast_towns() returned all values, not the proper values.

    • Fixes bug where BOM and SILO metadata were not properly merged when using find_nearby_stations()

    • Fixes bug where closed stations are included in the nearest stations when using find_nearby_stations() and include_closed = FALSE (default).

    • Fixes the messages when stations aren’t found nearby. In certain cases the message indicated that a station_code was used when latitude and longitude had been provided and vice versa.

    • Fixes bug when there are no stations that meet the criteria set by the user and an error was emitted that “x” must be a {data.table} object. The function now simply errors if there are no stations from either API that meet the criteria.

  • get_dpird_extremes()

    • Fixes example in get_dpird_extremes() that didn’t use “your_api_key” as all other examples did for error checking.

    • Fixes example for get_dpird_extremes() that didn’t follow the package’s standard use of “your_api_key” for the api_key value in the example.

  • Fixes the re-export of terra::plot() where checks indicated that it does not have a documented return value or examples.

  • Fixes a bug where the package data was not available when this package was called by another, e.g., {extractOz} used get_patched_point() but could not validate the user-input values because silo_daily_values could not be found.

  • Fixes bug where results from get_dpird_summaries() were truncated to only a few of the last results requested rather than the full set from start date to end date.

  • Fixes bug where the DPIRD API would not properly respond to requests from Windows OS machines.

  • Fixes bug where SILO Data Drill gridded data were not available with enough precision.

  • Fixes bug where include_closed wasn’t passed along to the API when querying DPIRD station weather data. All queries now included closed stations by default so that a request for a closed station is not denied due to this not being specified, commit.

weatherOz 0.0.1

  • Added a NEWS.md file to track changes to the package.