Air Quality Index - measures particles in the air
Ozone
PM2.5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates#Wildfire_smoke_risk
Determining air quality in my area is as simple as visiting https://www.airnow.gov and entering my zip code. Although my zip code covers 139.56 square miles, the result is accurate enough for my needs. When my zip code was submitted, the web page did not refresh. This means that the client interface made an API call to the backend server.
It sure would be nice if the AQI status was emailed to my phone every hour, if the AQI was above a certain threshold.
In order to get the data from the API, it is necessary to emulate the request made by the client to the API. This can be accomplished using Firefox.
Another set of tabs are now available to display various bits of information regarding the request. From this data, it is possible to recreate the query.
However, I took an even easier route, and right-clicked on the query in the Network tab, and selected Copy > Copy as cURL
to get the request as a curl command complete with all necessary arguments prefilled. Since I didn't want to write my entire AQI fetching script in bash, I copied the curl command into a text file and ported the request to Ruby.
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
require 'json'
uri ="https://airnowgovapi.com/reportingarea/get"
parsed_uri = URI.parse(uri)
payload={latitude:39.88,longitude:-120.76,stateCode:'CA',maxDistance:50}
response = Net::HTTP.post_form(parsed_uri, payload)
data = JSON.parse(response.body)[0]
aqi=data["aqi"].to_i
category=data['category']
parameter=data['parameter']
output= "#{parameter}: #{aqi} - #{category}"
puts output
/opt/textjezra "#{output}"` if aqi > 70
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