Weather Widget for TYPO3

Tourism websites without current weather give away one of the most searched-for pieces of information

When someone searches for “Mallorca weather” or “Zermatt weather today”, they expect the destination’s website to show the weather. If it doesn’t, the visitor leaves and opens a weather app instead. That is a missed opportunity, because the visitor was already on the right website. weather2 brings current weather data into TYPO3: temperature, conditions, precipitation, wind, humidity and a multi-day forecast. The data comes from OpenWeatherMap or comparable APIs and is refreshed at a configurable interval. For tourism websites, outdoor event portals and regional news portals, this is a standard feature that visitors expect.

Destination portals, campsites and ski resorts benefit most

The most common scenario is a region’s tourism portal. The tourist board of a town on Lake Constance shows the current weather on its home page: 22°C, sunny, water temperature 19°C. Next to it sits a 5-day forecast. Visitors planning a day trip get the relevant information immediately and stay on the site to book activities. The water temperature comes from a separate API endpoint or is maintained manually.

A second scenario is campsites and holiday parks. A campsite in the Black Forest shows next week’s weather on its booking page. Visitors torn between two travel weeks can use the forecast to make up their minds. For the campsite operator, that is a conversion argument: “The sun is shining, book now.”

Third scenario: ski resorts and outdoor events. A ski resort shows the temperature at the summit and in the valley, the snow depth (from a separate data source) and the wind speed. An outdoor festival shows the forecast for the festival weekend. In both cases, the weather display adds concrete value that keeps visitors on the website.

Weather data is fetched via API and cached locally

weather2 communicates with the OpenWeatherMap API (or alternatively with providers such as WeatherAPI, Visual Crossing or Meteostat). The configuration in the TYPO3 backend defines the API key, the location (coordinates or place name), the units (metric or imperial), the language and the update interval. The default interval is 30 minutes: every 30 minutes, an API request goes to OpenWeatherMap, and the response is cached in the TYPO3 database.

The frontend plugin renders the weather data through Fluid templates: current temperature, weather icon (sun, clouds, rain), text description, wind and humidity. The multi-day forecast shows the daily minimum and maximum for three to seven days. Icons are delivered as SVG rather than as external image URLs, so no additional requests go to third-party servers.

For the API key, OpenWeatherMap offers a free plan with 1,000 calls per day, which is more than enough at a 30-minute interval (48 calls per day). Websites with several locations (for example a tourist board covering 10 towns) need 480 calls per day, which is still within the free tier. Paid plans (from $40 per month) offer hourly updates and extended data such as the UV index and pollen levels.

Common problems involve API limits, caching and stale data

The most common problem is exceeding the API limit. If TYPO3 caching is not configured correctly and every page request triggers an API call, the free tier’s limit of 1,000 calls is used up within a few hours. The extension then shows no data or an error. The fix: make sure the weather data is stored in the TYPO3 cache and not fetched again on every frontend request. This caching has to work independently of the page cache (a Scheduler task or a dedicated cache entry).

Second problem: stale weather data. If the Scheduler task stops running (cron job disabled, server migration), the website shows weather data that is days or weeks old. That is worse than showing nothing at all. The fix: build a fallback into the Fluid template that checks whether the cached data is older than two hours and hides the widget instead of showing wrong data.

Third issue: data protection. If the client fetches the weather data from the API directly via JavaScript, the browser transmits the visitor’s IP address to the API provider. That is a transfer of data to a third party, and it falls under the GDPR. The server-side approach (the TYPO3 server calls the API, not the browser) avoids this problem.

TYPO3 v12 is supported, and the API integration stays stable across versions

weather2 uses the TYPO3 HTTP client library for API requests and Fluid templates for rendering. Both are stable in the TYPO3 core. The extension runs under v12 without problems. For v13, only minimal adjustments are needed (Scheduler task registration, plugin configuration). Because the core logic (HTTP request, JSON parsing, database storage) is standardized, the extension requires little maintenance during TYPO3 upgrades. Gosign configures weather widgets as part of tourism website projects and makes sure that API caching, fallback and data protection are implemented correctly.