I fixed Apple's broken Weather Dashboard Widget

[Lasthenia]

I reverted the timezone change I made in v2020.05.13—locations in other timezones should now have the correct day/night colors. The issue I was originally trying to fix is no longer happening, so I think it must have been a bug on Weatherbit's end.
As always, please let me know if you run into problems, I appreciate it!

Updated but I'm sorry to say that the two US cities (west and east coast) I have are still showing with a night background even though a bright sun is shining in the top half of the widget at close to 8am PDT / 11am EDT.

Thank you for trying to fix it though!

 

[Wowfunhappy]

...same here, and I live in the US! For some reason, it worked properly yesterday, but stopped working today.

This caused me to do something I should have done originally, which was look at how Apple is actually determining day and night, which in turn led me to an easy way to avoid the whole problem.

The attachment in the first post has been updated and I think it will actually keep working this time.

 

[fatreg]

Thank you, thank you, thank you Wowfunhappy! Weather in High Sierra

 

[boswald]

Wow! Great job and thank you!

 

[maverick28]

I remembered something: when you clicked the name of a town it used to bring you to the web-page with a more detailed forecast.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

I remembered something: when you clicked the name of a town it used to bring you to the web-page with a more detailed forecast.

It did indeed, but in this one case, I purposefully left it out. I always found the old functionality annoying (too easy to accidentally click), and so decided against doing extra work for something I considered a net negative, even if it would have been more faithful.

 

[gdwarner]

Great fix, Wowfunhappy!

While I have already replaced Apple's weather widget with one that appears to be from NOAA, it is still good to have this one working again.

Now, then ... about that stock widget ...

Just kidding! Ha ha ha! Thanks, though!

 

[Wowfunhappy]

So, even though I assumed this widget would work on Tiger, I never had the opportunity to test it. Well, it so happens that when you assume, you make a... well, you know.

Turns out that Safari versions 1–3 don't support json parsing: https://caniuse.com/#search=json Since I'm using json very heavily, this is kind of a dealbreaker for Tiger support...

 

[Wowfunhappy]

The attachment in the first post has been updated with a fix for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. If you're not running Tiger, you don't necessarily need to bother updating.

For the uninitiated, Tiger was when Apple first introduced the Dashboard:

Little security note that Tiger users should not use this widget on an untrusted internet connection. I had to use an eval function to make JSON parsing work, and combined with the fact that we're not using https, this is the perfect opening for a hacker to launch a MitM attack.

If you're not running Tiger, this won't affect you at all—the problematic eval function won't run unless it's needed. Just don't connect that vintage PowerBook to the public wifi network at the coffee shop! 😊

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Is your Unit Converter widget still updating currency rates? Mine has stopped working and is stuck at "Retrieving data".

I said I would be interested in fixing this one, and now I did!

Consider this a beta release—if it works for all I'll eventually add it to the main download on the first page.

No API key needed for this one thanks to the wonderful folks running exchangeratesapi.io! However, a different sort of setup is needed if you are running an old version of OS X. (How old is old, I'm not sure--it was needed on 10.9 Mavericks. Try it on your version and let me know whether it works out of the box.)

Spoiler: Instructions for Old Versions of OS X Only

The bad news for old OS X users is that exchangeratesapi forces you to use https. The good news is they support TLS 1.0/1.1, so it should work everywhere (except maybe Tiger). The bad news again is they seem to be using a certificate that isn't present in old versions of OS X. The good news again is you can add the certificate to Keychain Access yourself! Instructions are for Firefox, but the process with other browsers should be similar:

1. Go to https://api.exchangeratesapi.io/ in your web browser.
2. If you're using Firefox, click the lock (🔒) icon in the menu bar, then click the arrow (>) next to "Connection Secure", and hit "More Information".
3. Select the "Security" tab, and then "View Certificate"
4. Scroll down to "Download" and hit the link for "PEM (chain)"
5. Double click the downloaded exchangeratesapi-io-chain.pem file to add it to Keychain Access.
6. Find the new "exchangeratesapi.io" certificate in Keychain Access, and double click it to open the Inspector Pain.
7. Expand the "Trust" menu, and set "Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)" to "Always Trust". Close the window, and enter your password when prompted.

I know that seems like a lot of steps, but it's really quite simple—you're just clicking on a bunch of things. And, it's only for older versions of OS X.

 

[maverick28]

There's an easier solution as of the present moment, at least. I found another currency converting Dashboard widget just several days ago and, believe it or not, the Apple's Dashboard web-site provided a downloadable link. Works in macOSes as old as Lion (rates are updated daily). It's way more configurable than the stock one. Check it out for yourself. I give an iCloud Drive shared link below:
Currency Converter by Paolo Grifantini, v2.0.2

 

[gdwarner]

I don't suppose anybody has found a working substitute or a fix for the now-dead Stocks widget yet ...?

 

[Wowfunhappy]

There's an easier solution as of the present moment, at least. I found another currency converting Dashboard widget just several days ago and, believe it or not, the Apple's Dashboard web-site provided a downloadable link. Works in macOSes as old as Lion (rates are updated daily). It's way more configurable than the stock one. Check it out yourself. I give an iCloud Drive shared link below:
Currency Converter by Paolo Grifantini, v2.0.2

This works too, but Apple’s is prettier!

 

[gdwarner]

Sorry, come again, what's so funny?

I was wondering that myself! Your method worked just fine on this end:

 

[maverick28]

Strange that both London and Weimar show weekdays beginning with "Mon" even though as of this message's posting time it should've been "Tue". It's now 03:39 AM EET GMT+3 (Tue, June 23) which translates to 01:39 AM GMT+1 (British Summer Time) for London, and 02:39 AM GMT+2 for Weimar. I believe the widget computes chronometrical values according to GMT+0 which falls on 12:39 PM, Mon June 22 instead.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Huh, I can't replicate, at least right now.

 

[maverick28]

Oops, it slipped through me that you updated on June 13, I had an older version. Now it shows correct days.

 

[maverick28]

Hmm, Weimar still stuck on Monday. London, Riga are OK.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Hmm, Weimar still stuck on Monday. London, Riga are OK.

Thanks, confirmed on my end. Luckily, this time it's not a bug.

Rather, Weatherbit sometimes doesn't stop sending the previous day (or start sending the next day) right at midnight. For Weimar (as of 11:30 pm EDT), I confirmed that it's still sending the widget information for Monday, which the widget is then displaying. Moreover, the information is accurate—Tuesday weather isn't appearing in the Monday slot or anything like that—even if one of the days is in the past.

Thanks for letting me know!

 

[Nedstah]

Tried the Weather Widget patch on three systems today. Hung at validating on Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion and Mojave. Currency Unit patch working on Mojave and Mountain Lion, not on Snow Leopard. Same install method on all three.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Tried the Weather Widget patch on three systems today. Hung at validating on Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion and Mojave. Currency Unit patch working on Mojave and Mountain Lion, not on Snow Leopard. Same install method on all three.

Thanks for testing the currency converter and reporting in! Sad to hear it doesn't work on SL, but I don't think I can do much. It's probably an HTTPS incompatibility, and the currency converter was kind of a low-effort project. If you have access to a web server, you may be able to work around the problem with something like what we used to do for the weather widget back when it used DarkSky: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...eather-dashboard-widget.2225715/post-28275324

I want to fix that weather widget though, I put a lot of effort into making it compatible with everything! First, please check that your MapQuest API key is correct, and maybe try generating a new one and replacing it, just in case! If that doesn't work, can you see if there's any errors in Console.app? I need to reproduce the problem somehow.

 

[gdwarner]

I don't suppose you have a similar fix for that Stocks widget by any chance ...?

 

[Nedstah]

Thanks for testing the currency converter and reporting in! Sad to hear it doesn't work on SL, but I don't think I can do much. It's probably an HTTPS incompatibility, and the currency converter was kind of a low-effort project. If you have access to a web server, you may be able to work around the problem with something like what we used to do for the weather widget back when it used DarkSky: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...eather-dashboard-widget.2225715/post-28275324

I want to fix that weather widget though, I put a lot of effort into making it compatible with everything! First, please check that your MapQuest API key is correct, and maybe try generating a new one and replacing it, just in case! If that doesn't work, can you see if there's any errors in Console.app? I need to reproduce the problem somehow.

Success! Couldn't find anything in Console so I rechecked the API/parser file. I had entered a zero for what should have been a lower case "o".

 

[Wowfunhappy]

I don't suppose you have a similar fix for that Stocks widget by any chance ...?

You've asked this before, I'm sorry to say I just don't have the time/energy to do it by myself. The weather widget took several full days of work to get off the ground, plus time on fix-ups as bugs have come to light.

If you would like to do it, I'm happy to guide you through the process and collaborate—you just need some beginner Javascript knowledge, and time. I can handle parsing the json from whatever API we use, but I need someone to do the trial-and-error work to figure out how Apple's stocksParser.js gives data to the widget. You'd also need to find us a free api that gives stock information as JSON.

Success! Couldn't find anything in Console so I rechecked the API/parser file. I had entered a zero for what should have been a lower case "o".

🎉

 

[gdwarner]

You've asked this before, I'm sorry to say I just don't have the time/energy to do it by myself. The weather widget took several full days of work to get off the ground.

If you would like to do it, I'm happy to guide you through the process and collaborate—you just need some beginner Javascript knowledge, and time. I can handle parsing the json from whatever API we use, but I need someone to do the trial-and-error work to figure out how Apple's stocksParser.js gives data to the widget. You'd also need to find us a free api that gives stock information as JSON.



🎉

You're right, I did! I had completely forgotten.

My JavaScript classes were a long time ago, but I will look for a free API or two.Hopefully I'll find one that's of use!