# Getting started

Getting started with DataPoint for Python is simple and you can write a simple script which prints out data in just 6 lines of Python.

## API Key

To access DataPoint you need to register with the Met Office and get yourself an API key. The process is simple and just ensures that you don’t abuse the service.

## Connecting to DataPoint

Now that we have an API key we can import the module:

    import datapoint

And create a connection to DataPoint:

    conn = datapoint.connection(api_key="aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee")

This creates a Manager object which manages our connection and interacts with DataPoint for us, we’ll discuss Manager Objects in depth later but for now you just need to know that it looks after your API key and has a load of methods to return data from DataPoint.

## Getting data from DataPoint

So now that we have our Manager Object with a connection to DataPoint we can request some data. Our goal is to request some forecast data but first we need to know the site ID for the location we want data for. Luckily the Manager Object has a method to return a Site object, which contains the ID among other things, from a specified latitude and longitude.

We can simply request a Site Object like so:

    site = conn.get_nearest_forecast_site(51.500728, -0.124626)

For now we’re just going to use this object to get us our forecast but you’ll find more information about what the Site Object contains later.

Let’s call another of the Manager Object’s methods to give us a Forecast object for our site:

    forecast = conn.get_forecast_for_site(site.location_id, "3hourly")

We’ve given this method two parameters, the site ID for the forecast we want and also a forecast type of “3hourly”. We’ll discuss the forecast types later on.

This Forecast Object which has been returned to us contains lots of information which we will cover in a later section, right now we’re just going to get the Timestep object which represents right this minute:

    current_timestep = forecast.now()

This Timestep Object contains many different details about the weather but for now we’ll just print out the weather text.

    print current_timestep.weather.text

And there you have it. If you followed all the steps you should have printed out the current weather for your chosen location.

## Further Examples

For more code examples please have a look in the examples folder in the GitHub project.