Tide Height (tides) block (SOLVED)

[WessexWeather]

Hi all,

I notice the Tide Height (tides) block is no longer working. I see people have had problems with this before, but I’ve never noticed until now.

It looks as though the block is no longer available for download, so I’m assuming Jachym removed it. Can anyone else confirm whether their tides block is working, and whether I should delete it?

[John B]

Yes, Simon,

This block became inoperative quite some time ago. I played around with it for a while, on-and-off, but could not find a way to solve the issue. Perhaps it was an API matter. I cannot remember what or if Jáchym gave us an explanation. The block was removed from my site as being a useless waste of space.

Regards,
John

[WessexWeather]

Thanks for the reply John, I’ve now removed mine also.

[meteocaldas]

Hi all,

I notice the Tide Height (tides) block is no longer working. Can anyone else confirm whether their tides block is working, and whether I should delete it?

Yes, tides block has stopped working more than one year ago and Jachym deleted it.
It stopped working due to changes in html source. I tried to put it working again but parsing data from source site was very confusing for me and I had no sucess
A few days ago I discovered a new source, much easier to parse from and the result is working fine as shown in the pic.

Jachym is trying to use less third party dependencies (what makes sense), and this block uses a different structure from former tidesBlock, so it cannot be customized using previous config or setup files. These reasons justify why I am not publishing it here.
Anyway, if anyone here will be interested in this new tides block, please e-mail me and I will be very pleased to send you a ready to use block.
To customize it for you, please let me know 2 things
- the name of the place for which you want the tides to be calculated (or lat and long)
- the number of days you want to display in the block. I am displaying only 3 days to make the block size similar to what it was before, but it can display any number of days of the CURRENT month, before or after current date.

[WessexWeather]

Hi, great work! I’d be very interested in trying this block, set for Bournemouth UK for three days ahead.

Thanks for this.

[meteocaldas]

I’d be very interested in trying this block, set for Bournemouth UK for three days ahead.

Hi Simon.
When I was trying to customize my tidesBlock for your location... surprise!!!
Bournmouth is one of the South England locations that doesn't have the regular pattern of 4 (or 3) tides a day, like we have in Portugal and Spain. However, not far away from you, Portsmouth has that regular pattern too!
Confusing? Yes it is... but the pic shows it all.

tidesuk.PNG (130.95 KiB) Viewed 11389 times

The source where I get the tides from, shows up to 7 or 8 tides a day in Bournmouth, because it counts all those tide bumps!!!

tidesuktable.PNG (51 KiB) Viewed 11389 times

This would give a wrong result compared to the official tide table from the UK Hydrographic Office (http://www.ukho.gov.uk/easytide/easytid ... onLength=3) that only shows 3 or 4 tides a day for Bournmouth, ignoring all the secondary tide bumps.


Here is the result I get with my tideBlock for Bournmouth (wrong) and Portsmouth (correct)

tides_born_port.PNG (85.99 KiB) Viewed 11389 times

In other words: my tidesBlock, as it is now, cannot display tides for locations that don't have the regular pattern of 3 or 4 tides a day.

However, the good news is that I will probably find a way to make a tidesBlock with data shown in UK Hydrographic Office!
The result would be 100% accurate, because it would use "official" UK tide times and heights, instead of the less precise data obtained from my current source.
I am going to try it, and I will let you know the results as soon as possible

[WessexWeather]

Trust the Brits to be different!

Unfortunately Portsmouth is not local enough to me. I appreciate your work on this and look forward to hearing from you.

[meteocaldas]

Trust the Brits to be different!

Confirmed!

Good news Simon!
I managed to get the first of the daily tides!!!!

Now it is just a matter of patience and time to get the rest by looping through the dates and automate the change between UTC or BST time. I am not a php expert so all my work is done by trial-error-trial and that takes time but i hope to have this tidesBlock for English tides, ready by tomorrow night.
Cheers

tidesborn.PNG (19.19 KiB) Viewed 11373 times

[WessexWeather]

Great!

By the way, Bournemouth is missing an “e” in your block...

[meteocaldas]

Hi Simon
Here it is the tidesBlock for Bournemouth with an "e"

tidesborn.PNG (36.55 KiB) Viewed 11362 times

Please test it and let me know if anything else needs to be done.
There are many possible layouts for the data but this layout is the one that takes less space for 3 day tides. Tide times are show in BST but please compare with other sources and let me know if times are ok.
I am sending you the files by mail.
cheers

[barbuser]

Would you mind customizing this block for my site?

Galveston, TX USA
3 days

Thank you