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Alteryx Designer Desktop Discussions

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Weather API Call - Null Rows

jkovacs
5 - Atom

Hi all,

 

I've picked up a Weather API Call from a coworker. The API calls several IDs from different counties, on different months, for different weather measurements.

 

jkovacs_0-1630413001648.png

 

While most provide the proper JSON output, some remain. When I re-run these I see they output nulls in every row and column.

 

I'm confused why this is happening? Is there no weather data for that selection or is there an issue with the workflow? No link/connection errors display. Data is pulled from https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/

 

jkovacs_1-1630413077566.png

 

 

Here are a few more screenshots that might help and let me know if it'd be helpful to put together a sample workflow. Thanks!

 

jkovacs_2-1630413278239.png

 

jkovacs_3-1630413294135.png

 

 

3 REPLIES 3
patrick_mcauliffe
14 - Magnetar
14 - Magnetar

Hey @jkovacs  are you still having trouble with this?

I’d be interested to see the raw text from the download tool before it hits the JSON parse.

jkovacs
5 - Atom

Hi @patrick_mcauliffe sorry for the delay. 

 

I am still experiencing this issue. I attached the output from the download tool right before it hits the JSON parse.

 

I believe the conclusion we drew was that some calls just don't have information from the weather station. That conclusion's strange though because the same station will have data for other months or weather types, so the inconsistency is strange.

 

Appreciate any help!

patrick_mcauliffe
14 - Magnetar
14 - Magnetar

Hey @jkovacs  thanks for posting that.
I see a few issues.

1. NOAA has been, in my experience,  a relatively unstable source.  It has great data but the resources used to back it aren't the most available.  That could be part of the problem. (see cell I:72)

2. It appears your connection is behind a firewall or proxy that may not be letting the responses make it all the way to your machine. (I:145).  This is also suggested by the response headers you're getting in the empty messages

3. The last (on my first glance) and probably biggest issue is your request rate.  See I:1366.  You're allowed 5 per second.  That  limitation in combination with the above two are a pretty good combination to result in not getting data.

 

What I would suggest trying:

If you're using the workflow behind a company firewall, check with IT to make sure there aren't rate limits. It's not an issue of getting to the endpoint, but some systems have controls over the numbers of requests or response to prevent getting flooded.

Throttle your workflow.  On the Download tool, connection tab, change the max connections to 1 and lower the number of records per minute.

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