Technical Reference for the WVDE School Closings XML feeds

Last revised: 2012-03-02

This document provides a technical reference to the fields used in the XML feeds for our school closings system. It is intended for those who wish to programmatically read our closings information and act upon it based on the information provided.

Feeds for public schools may be accessed via one of the following URL formats:

http://wvde.state.wv.us/closings/xml

for the state-wide public school feed,

http://wvde.state.wv.us/closings/xml/countyname

for feeds restricted to a particular county (substituting the county's name for the word "countyname").

Feeds for private schools and colleges follow a similar format:

http://wvde.state.wv.us/closings/xml/college

for all colleges, and

http://wvde.state.wv.us/closings/xml/private

for all private schools. XML feeds are also available for a few specific private schools and colleges. These are handled on a case-by-case basis and available upon request.

Each feed shows information for today's date and later. If you have a need to keep information in excess of this limit, you are advised to save the feed information to your own database.

All our XML feeds are standard XML documents, and you should therefore not rely on these fields being in the order listed below. The WVDE reserves the right to change this information at any time. You are advised to refer to this document for any future changes.

announcement
Provides the container for a single school closings announcement. The absence of this container means there are no current announcements.
type
Indicates whether this is a school announcement, bus announcement, private school announcement, or college announcement by the word "school", "bus", "private", or "college".
school
(type=school,private,college) Indicates a school name, or "All" if all schools in the county are affected.
status_text
(type=school,private,college) Indicates, in text, the status of the affected place.
status
(type=school,private,college) Indicates, numerically, the status of the affected place:
  • 1 = 1-hr delay
  • 2 = 2-hr delay
  • 3 = early dismissal with specific dismissal time
  • 4 = closed
  • 5 = dismissing 1 hour early
  • 6 = dismissing 2 hours early
  • 7 = dismissing 3 hours early
  • 8 = dismissing 4 hours early
dismissal_time
(type=school,private,college, status=3) Indicates the time when schools are closing early.
cause
(Optional, type=school,private,college) Indicates the reason for closing.
code
(Optional, type=school) Indicates a county-specific code to be followed by school personnel. It is assumed the affected personnel will know what this code means.
more_info
(Optional, type=school,private,college) Additional information accompanying this announcement. Expect freeform information in this field.
bus_description
(type=bus) A textual description of an alternate route which a bus will be using on the effective date. Expect freeform information in this field.
bus_area
(Optional, type=bus) A county-defined area used for grouping bus routes together. Expect freeform information in this field.
county
(optional, type=school,private) Indicates the county name.
date_effective
The date the announcement is in effect (YYYY-MM-DD).
last_modified
The last time this announcement was edited (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS). Times here are all 24-hour format in Eastern time (EST or EDT, whichever is in effect).