Thank you to Francesco Azzola for the article:
– http://www.survivingwithandroid.com
– @survivingwithan
– https://it.linkedin.com/in/francescoazzola

This post describes how to use OpenWeatherMap UV Index. This is an interesting API because we can use it to explore some important aspects of Android and of location-aware APIs. OpenWeatherMap provides this API for free! As you may already know, OpenWeatherMap also provides a full set of APIs about weather information: you can get current weather conditions, forecast, historical information and so on. This information is free, and we can use OpenWeatherMap APIs free of charge.

At the end of this article, we will build an Android app that gets the UV index and shows it using Material Design guidelines.

Before diving into the details of the app, it is useful to have some idea about the UV index.

There are many online map services for those who prefer active leisure. For example, here is a map with bike routes: http://www.thunderforest.com/maps/opencyclemap/.

Route maps are extremely useful! Also, while choosing a route it would be beneficial to know the weather in the region you will be travelling in. And what if we combine a bike route map with weather data from OpenWeatherMap? Eureka!

Map Editor 2.0 can help us with that!

In recent years, the fight against air pollution has become global. Humanity, at least when we are speaking about developed countries, starts to realize finally that the Earth is our common home which can get not suitable for living in the near future. Atmospheric pollution takes place when substances harmful for living creatures diffuse throughout the surrounding air, and then this destructive activity has its toxic impact later since it causes global changes of climate of the Earth.

Taking into account the great importance of the climate change issue, we at OpenWeatherMap would like to make our own contribution to making this world a better place.

The first version of the APIs includes several data sets: CO (carbon), NO₂ (nitrogen dioxide), O₃ (ozone), SO₂ (sulphur dioxide).

We hope that the air condition data, both current and historical, will give you a great opportunity to create a variety of new applications and analytic services to keep an eye on what we breathe in real time and whether there is any improvement over time.