GWeather – 4.0: Migrating from GWeather 3.x to GWeather 4
Description: Reference for GWeather-4.0: Migrating from GWeather 3.x to GWeather 4

# Migrating from GWeather 3.x to GWeather 4

GWeather 4 is a new major version that breaks API and ABI compared with GWeather 3.

### Stop using `GWeatherLocationEntry` and `GWeatherTimezoneMenu`

GWeather 4 does not provide GTK widgets for selecting a location or a time zone. Applications should provide their own UI, if needed, according to the best practices of the GNOME human interface guidelines.

## Preparations

Before migrating to GWeather 4, there are steps to follow in order to minimise the changes you have to implement once you switch.

### Stop using `gweather_location_get_children()`

In order to iterate over the child locations of a `GWeatherLocation`, you should use the iterator method `gweather_location_next_child()`:

    /* Iterating using get_children() */
    GWeatherLocation **children = gweather_location_get_children (location);
    for (guint i = 0; children[i] != NULL; i++) {
      GWeatherLocation *iter = children[i];
      // ...
    }

    /* Iterating using next_child() */
    g_autoptr (GWeatherLocation) iter = NULL;
    while ((iter = gweather_location_next_child (location, iter)) != NULL) {
      // ...
    }

Note: Unlike `gweather_location_get_children()`, the `next_child()` method will consume the reference of the iterated child; if you are keeping a reference to each child `GWeatherLocation` you should acquire a strong reference to it, using `g_object_ref()`.

### Stop using `gweather_info_get_radar()`

The radar image provider stopped working a while ago, and the `get_radar()` method has been returning `NULL` since then.

### Stop using `GWEATHER_PROVIDER_YAHOO`

The Yahoo! provider was removed in libgweather 3.28.

### Always pass a location to find and detect nearest location API

The `gweather_location_find_nearest_city()`, `gweather_location_find_nearest_city_full()`, and `gweather_location_detect_nearest_city()` methods do not accept `NULL` as the instance argument any more.

## Changes

The following changes in GWeather 4 are incompatible with GWeather 3.x, and must be performed at the time of the port.

### `GWeatherLocation` is a GObject

`GWeatherLocation` has been promoted to a full `GObject` type. This means that properties using `GWeatherLocation` should be defined using `g_param_spec_object()`, and `GValue`s should be accessed using `g_value_set_object()` and `g_value_get_object()`. If you are using `gweather_location_ref()` to acquire a reference on a location instance, you should now use `g_object_ref()`; if you are using `gweather_location_unref()` to release a reference on a location instance, you should now use `g_object_unref()`.

### Use `GTimeZone` instead of `GWeatherTimezone`

The `GWeatherTimezone` type has been removed, in favor of the existing `GTimeZone` type provided by GLib.

The `GTimeZone` type provides all the functionality of the `GWeatherTimezone` structure, and includes all the interval data from the time zone database.

If you are using `gweather_timezone_get_offset()` to compare two time zones, you can replace that with `g_time_zone_find_interval()` to find the interval relative to the current time; and then use `g_time_zone_get_offset()` to retrieve the offset. For instance, this code:

    GWeatherTimezone *tz_a = gweather_location_get_timezone (location_a);
    GWeatherTimezone *tz_b = gweather_location_get_timezone (location_b);

    int offset_a = gweather_timezone_get_offset (tz_a);
    int offset_b = gweather_timezone_get_offset (tz_b);

can be rewritten as:

    GTimeZone *tz_a = gweather_location_get_timezone (location_a);
    GTimeZone *tz_b = gweather_location_get_timezone (location_b);

    // Find the interval relative to the current time; if you are performing
    // the offset comparison in a loop, for instance to sort a list of time
    // zones, you may want to hoist the computation of the "now" outside the
    // loop, to ensure that the intervals are all relative to the same time
    g_autoptr (GDateTime) dt = g_date_time_new_now_local ();
    gint64 now = g_date_time_to_unix (dt);

    int interval_a = g_time_zone_find_interval (tz_a, G_TIME_TYPE_STANDARD, now);
    int interval_b = g_time_zone_find_interval (tz_b, G_TIME_TYPE_STANDARD, now);

    // Retrieve the offset for the given interval
    int offset_a = g_time_zone_get_offset (tz_a, interval_a);
    int offset_b = g_time_zone_get_offset (tz_b, interval_b);