markdown_files/BBC_Weather_API_with_Python.md

---

title: "BBC Weather API with Python"
original_url: "https://tds.s-anand.net/#/bbc-weather-api-with-python?id=bbc-weather-location-id-with-python"
downloaded_at: "2025-06-08T23:24:13.538036"
---


[BBC Weather location ID with Python](#/bbc-weather-api-with-python?id=bbc-weather-location-id-with-python)
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[![BBC Weather location API with Python](https://i.ytimg.com/vi_webp/IafLrvnamAw/sddefault.webp)](https://youtu.be/IafLrvnamAw)

You’ll learn how to get the location ID of any city from the BBC Weather API – as a precursor to scraping weather data – covering:

* **Understanding API Calls**: Learn how backend API calls work when searching for a city on the BBC weather website.
* **Inspecting Web Interactions**: Use the browser’s inspect element feature to track API calls and understand the network activity.
* **Extracting Location IDs**: Identify and extract the location ID from the API response using Python.
* **Using Python Libraries**: Import and use requests, json, and urlencode libraries to make API calls and process responses.
* **Constructing API URLs**: Create structured API URLs dynamically with constant prefixes and query parameters using urlencode.
* **Building Functions**: Develop a Python function that accepts a city name, constructs the API call, and returns the location ID.

To open the browser Developer Tools on Chrome, Edge, or Firefox, you can:

* Right-click on the page and select “Inspect” to open the developer tools
* OR: Press `F12`
* OR: Press `Ctrl+Shift+I` on Windows
* OR: Press `Cmd+Opt+I` on Mac

Here are links and references:

* [BBC Location ID scraping - Notebook](https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1-iV-tbtRicKR_HXWeu4Hi5aXJCV3QdQp)
* [BBC Weather - Palo Alto (location ID: 5380748)](https://www.bbc.com/weather/5380748)
* [BBC Locator Service - Los Angeles](https://locator-service.api.bbci.co.uk/locations?api_key=AGbFAKx58hyjQScCXIYrxuEwJh2W2cmv&stack=aws&locale=en&filter=international&place-types=settlement%2Cairport%2Cdistrict&order=importance&s=los%20angeles&a=true&format=json)
* Learn about the [`requests` package](https://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/user/quickstart/). Watch [Python Requests Tutorial: Request Web Pages, Download Images, POST Data, Read JSON, and More](https://youtu.be/tb8gHvYlCFs)

[BBC Weather data with Python](#/bbc-weather-api-with-python?id=bbc-weather-data-with-python)
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[![Scrape BBC weather with Python](https://i.ytimg.com/vi_webp/Uc4DgQJDRoI/sddefault.webp)](https://youtu.be/Uc4DgQJDRoI)

You’ll learn how to scrape the live weather data of a city from the BBC Weather API, covering:

* **Introduction to Web Scraping**: Understand the basics of web scraping and its legality.
* **Libraries Overview**: Learn the importance of [`requests`](https://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/user/quickstart/) and [`BeautifulSoup`](https://beautiful-soup-4.readthedocs.io/).
* **Fetching HTML**: Use [`requests`](https://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/user/quickstart/) to fetch HTML content from a web page.
* **Parsing HTML**: Utilize [`BeautifulSoup`](https://beautiful-soup-4.readthedocs.io/) to parse and navigate the HTML content.
* **Identifying Data**: Inspect HTML elements to locate specific data (e.g., high and low temperatures).
* **Extracting Data**: Extract relevant data using [`BeautifulSoup`](https://beautiful-soup-4.readthedocs.io/)‘s `find_all()` function.
* **Data Cleanup**: Clean extracted data to remove unwanted elements.
* **Post-Processing**: Use regular expressions to split large strings into meaningful parts.
* **Data Structuring**: Combine extracted data into a structured pandas DataFrame.
* **Handling Special Characters**: Replace unwanted characters for better data manipulation.
* **Saving Data**: Save the cleaned data into CSV and Excel formats.

Here are links and references:

* [BBC Weather scraping - Notebook](https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1-gkMzE-TKe3U_yh1v0NPn4TM687H2Hcf)
* [BBC Locator Service - Mumbai](https://locator-service.api.bbci.co.uk/locations?api_key=AGbFAKx58hyjQScCXIYrxuEwJh2W2cmv&stack=aws&locale=en&filter=international&place-types=settlement%2Cairport%2Cdistrict&order=importance&s=mumbai&a=true&format=json)
* [BBC Weather - Mumbai (location ID: 1275339)](https://www.bbc.com/weather/1275339)
* [BBC Weather API - Mumbai (location ID: 1275339)](https://weather-broker-cdn.api.bbci.co.uk/en/forecast/aggregated/1275339)
* Learn about the [`json` package](https://docs.python.org/3/library/json.html). Watch [Python Tutorial: Working with JSON Data using the json Module](https://youtu.be/9N6a-VLBa2I)
* Learn about the [`BeautifulSoup` package](https://beautiful-soup-4.readthedocs.io/). Watch [Python Tutorial: Web Scraping with BeautifulSoup and Requests](https://youtu.be/ng2o98k983k)
* Learn about the [`pandas` package](https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/10min.html). Watch
  + [Python Pandas Tutorial (Part 1): Getting Started with Data Analysis - Installation and Loading Data](https://youtu.be/ZyhVh-qRZPA)
  + [Python Pandas Tutorial (Part 2): DataFrame and Series Basics - Selecting Rows and Columns](https://youtu.be/zmdjNSmRXF4)
* Learn about the [`re` package](https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html). Watch [Python Tutorial: re Module - How to Write and Match Regular Expressions (Regex)](https://youtu.be/K8L6KVGG-7o)
* Learn about the [`datetime` package](https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html). Watch [Python Tutorial: Datetime Module - How to work with Dates, Times, Timedeltas, and Timezones](https://youtu.be/eirjjyP2qcQ)

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