This service can be used to search for floats in the database, given a WMO partial number and possibly restrictions.
This service is used by the NA-ARC website to implement float search engines.
Note: This service usage is not to be confused with the restriction parameter 'qwmo'.
When using the service qwmo, you need to specify a partial or exact WMO (let's call it WMO_NumberToLookFor) number as argument like:
[api]/?qwmo=WMO_NumberToLookFor
The WMO_NumberToLookFor must contains strictly more than one digit. The NA-ARC web API will thus return the list of WMOs in the database which contain WMO_NumberToLookFor.
If no WMOs are found a null value is returned.
If WMOs are found, then the output is a JSON object of key/value where keys are a sorting unique id for the output and value the WMOs found in the database.
Let's the search the database for all floats with a WMO containing '49' (and limit the number of outputs to the first 5 results because more than 500 floats contain this pattern in their WMO, see the restriction parameter limit for more details):
?qwmo=49&limit=5
As of 2012/05/22 the API response to this request is:
If we look further down in the complete output list, for instance the 100 to 104 records of the complete output:
?qwmo=49&limit=5,100
we obtain:
You see in these two examples that the searched value '49' can be anywhere in float's WMO.
There are no other output format supported at this time for this service.