cleanup

.env.example

@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
 PORT=3001
-NIX_CHROMIUM_PATH=<PATH/TO/CHROMIUM/INSIDE/NIX/STORE>
-ON_NIX="true"
+
+#--- NixOS-only settings ---#
+NIX_CHROMIUM_PATH=""    # Set to chromium path (/nix/store/.../bin/chromium)
+ON_NIX="false"          # Set to true if on NixOS

README.md

@@ -1,22 +1,57 @@
 # Weather Web-Scraper
 
-> **CAUTION**  
-> The following utility is in EARLY developement. Many promises made in this
-> readme might not actually be true. Hopefully one day we'll be out of beta ~and
-> be releasing on time~
-
-An utility to scrape italian weather websites to collect and compare weather
-information for Pisa
+A backend that scrapes italian weather websites to collect and compare weather
+information for Pisa, and serve them as an API for a frontend that doesn't yet
+exist
 
 ## Usage
 
-> **WARNING**  
-> The script is configured to run on Nix, and because of this is more
-> complicated than it needs to be. You can remove unnecessary stuff if you're
-> not running this on nix
+<details>
+<summary>NixOS-specific setup</summary>
+
+In case you're using NixOS, you might have some trouble make `puppeteer` work,
+as `puppeteer` ships with its own copy of chromium, which has dynamic libraries.
+
+Dynamic libraries do not work on NixOS, and we must work around this to make
+puppeteer work. To do this, we first install separately chromium, and then tell
+`puppeteer` to use this chromium instead of its own
+
+You can either globally install chromium, and then get its path with
+`which chromium`, OR...  
+You can temporarily install it on a nix-shell, and this will put chromium in the
+stor until the next garbage collection. Of course this is a dirty way of solving
+this problem because you'd be using a chromium which isn't technically installed
+on your system, and it will disappear once you garbage collect, but it's also
+true that I don't really want chromium installed on my system sooooo... choose
+your poison
+
+Once you have chromium installed (or at least present in the nix store), get its
+path (with `which chromium` if it's installed or in some hacky way otherwise),
+and edit the `.env` file accordingly (remember to set `ON_NIX` to true as well)
+
+</details>
+
+Install the dependencies with
+
+```bash
+npm install
+```
+
+and then start the backend with
+
+```bash
+npm run serve
+```
+
+The backend will listen on the default port (3000) unless specified otherwise in
+the `.env` file.
+
+The only available endpoint is `/` which returns the latest update for the
+scraped data, in an object containing the data from all the sources, as well as
+the timestamp of the update.
 
 The script scrapes the weather forecast from the implemented sources (see the
-table below) and returns an object with the following fields
+table below) and returns an object with the following fields:
 
 -   **today:** an object with elements from the hour after the current one to
     23, of type `hourly` (see below)

package.json

@@ -4,5 +4,15 @@
         "express": "^4.21.1",
         "puppeteer": "^23.6.0"
     },
-    "type": "module"
+    "type": "module",
+    "name": "weather-scraper",
+    "version": "0.1.0",
+    "description": "A backend that scrapes italian weather websites to collect and compare weather information for Pisa, and serve them as an API for a frontend that doesn't yet exist",
+    "main": "index.js",
+    "devDependencies": {},
+    "scripts": {
+        "serve": "node index.js"
+    },
+    "author": "Francesco Baldino",
+    "license": "GPL-3"
 }