Free APIs for testing. Dontcha love 'em. *Five hours later*, am back where I started coding-wise, after swapping out the IMDB one I had yesterday (500 free calls/month exceeded in one day) and have now replaced it in React with OpenWeatherMap (2k calls/day).
Eureka moment. Two API subscriptions and 559 combined requests later and I find out that it's cloudy outside. But it beats looking through the window for maintainability.
upshot of this is that my delegates will not be able to choose a movie to go and see but will know whether to wear a coat to the cinema;)