Find Near banks , schools from latitude and longitude using geocoder gem - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm using geocoder rails gem. I want to find near banks , schools , hotels from some location.
location = Geocoder.search([48.856614, 2.3522219])
From above i can get location but not near important places.
How i can use near method of geocoder on "location" object, and find near places like hotels , schools and banks etc?
Any help?
Thanks

Answer 1

There is no filter or search as you describe in the Geocoder gem. You can get the nearest 10, 20, 50 other geocoded objects in your database.
So in order to make it function like you are describing you would need to Geocode each Hospital, School, Bank etc. and store them in a table, and then call nearbys on your point.
ie. Bulk geocode every Bank Listing within 500km in the location you are serving and check against that.
This method would quickly go stale and become ineffective. What you need is the Google Places API. They have a JS library you can leverage to get your results.
[Google Places JS API][1]
Text Search Requests The Google Places Text Search service is a web
service that returns information about a set of places based on a
string — for example "pizza in New York" or "shoe stores near Ottawa".
The service responds with a list of places matching the text string
and any location bias that has been set. The search response will
include a list of places. You can send a Place Details request for
more information about any of the places in the response.
I use the google api extensively and have found it remarkably easy to work with. Simply make a call to the API to retrieve an array of results for say, 'restaurant'. The example below is taken directly from the Google Developer page and will plot every restaurant in the Pyrmont area that they know about. The 'results' in the callback method will be a JSON object you can utilize with JS;
var map;
var service;
var infowindow;
function initialize() {
var pyrmont = new google.maps.LatLng(-33.8665433,151.1956316);
map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('map'), {
center: pyrmont,
zoom: 15
});
var request = {
location: pyrmont,
radius: '500',
query: 'restaurant'
};
service = new google.maps.places.PlacesService(map);
service.textSearch(request, callback);
}
function callback(results, status) {
if (status == google.maps.places.PlacesServiceStatus.OK) {
for (var i = 0; i < results.length; i++) {
var place = results[i];
createMarker(results[i]);
}
}
}