Excel Spreadsheet Automation on OpenWeatherMap Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for OpenWeatherMap provides formulas that can query OpenWeatherMap data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search OpenWeatherMap data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following:

=CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the OpenWeatherMap data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as APIConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to OpenWeatherMap data, separated by semicolons.

  Using API Key Authentication

  To obtain an API key, sign up for a free account at https://openweathermap.org/api and navigate to the API keys section of your dashboard. Copy your API key for use in the connection configuration.

  After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
  • APIKey: Set this to your OpenWeatherMap API key.
• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search OpenWeatherMap data, such as Latitude.
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.

=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM AccumulatedPrecipitation WHERE Latitude = '"&B5&"'","Profile="&B1&";AuthScheme="&B2&";ProfileSettings="&B3&";Provider=API",B6)

👁 Formula inputs used in this example. (Google Apps is shown.)

3. Change the filter to change the data. 👁 The outputs of the formula. (Google Apps is shown.)