Currently I am building a rails application using the gmaps4rails gem. I have only been working on this for ten days,
http://greenearth.herokuapp.com/
I apologize I only have one dyne up so it may be quite slow on heroku.
I understand that the gem interacts with google js api v3 for me. Basicly I am making an rails application where I want to display trash bins locations on a google map. I have a table with an address as a column in the table, the gem allows me to take the address column and spit out markers on a map. I have to query all the address, translate them to json with a method provided by the gem (and its added to my model), then bring it out to my view. It will generate the required javascript.
I am quite tempted to switch to the geocoder gem because its a lot better documented. This gem just isn't well documented. I can't find questions on stackoverflow related to this gem.
My next step is to add a feature, where anybody can put in their most immediate address on a form and the map (google api) will calculate which of my trash bin location is nearest to this input address.
The gem's wiki is not well documented. I am not quite well versed with the google map api. In the mean time can someone point me to the correct tutorial? or the right direction?
After looking into it a bit more it seems the developer (apneadiving) is actually quite active, just not in the same place, see these guides on features: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg5-33zedqM
There is a second video as well.
Looking into it further I can't see a method in the documentation that calculates distance.
I recommend trying this tutorial:
http://briancray.com/posts/how-to-calculate-the-distance-between-two-addresses-with-javascript-and-google-maps-api
Or just following the Distance Matrix service from Google.
I haven't tried to use these alongside the gem so you may have to change the code based on existing variables. It should* be easier because you have addresses and Lats/longs saved already.
Also have you set the App to initally geolocate the user?
I'm working on a similar issue myself so will update when I get there.
OK so after looking at the different gems I would recommend using both geocoder and gmaps4rails to achieve what you want. I would recommend gmaps4rails for the map rendering and marker addition and to use Geocoder for the distance calculations. Unfortunately neither gem is fully comprehensive in these features.
There is a good railscast on how to display nearby locations via a form using geocoder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUvGAcaW3bA
The method in geocoder is simply:
#address.nearbys(20)
Where '20' is a radius within which results will be displayed based on your other entries. Alternatively you could grab the user's current location using:
request.ip / request.location
Declare this as a variable then display nearby bins results in the show view (covered in rails cast). Just note that current location will not work in test/dev environment because of the webrick address as it says on the gem's homepage.
Hope that helps!
Related
I'm building an app for a client. The client want to be able to display street map with its location on the contact page.
I've never used maps in a web app before and I've been googling around.
there are so many options to use and I´m not sure which one to use.... this is just for displaying the streetmap, with a pin or something at the address, nothing too fancy.
should I use geokit-rails?
or rubygeocoder?
or Google Maps API?
or is there something else I can use?
what do you guys/girls recommend?
any suggestions would be great
thanks in advance
D
I use gem geocoder which I like. Just gem install geocoder. It supports geocoding and reverse geocoding, distance queries, rails 3-5. It is on github and website is here
Try gmaps4rails gem.
It is simple and easy to intregrate in rails application.
Check the Docs here.
I know this question has been asked but most answers were a few years old and not all for a Ruby on Rails project. In my current project, I am using the Geocode gem (via Ruby on Rails) and anyone is able to search users by their location (which I also use the Carmen gem for country, subregion).
Anyway, I've been receiving this issue lately (Google Geocoding API error: over query limit.). After reading up on it, I see that this is quite common. Most of the resolutions seem to involve caching but others say that it does not work much/well.
I wanted to pose the question to many here and see what various people think is a good resolution. Ideally it would be great to keep the Geocoding gem within the project, but if it is not worth it, please let me know of an alternative. If you know of a resolution to this issue, please let me know too.
Thank you and simply looking to receive feedback for this situation =)
PS: I do not use the Google Maps API. The project is setup so that a user enters their information (using Carmen gem) and typing the cit. The location is geocoded and others can type in a city, state/region to find users within that region.
EDIT
Additional Question: When this limit is met, would that also cause the longitude and latitude value to be nil when a user signs up? Since it is as the limit, it will not geocode the location entered and so it keeps the value at nil? I've had this happen before so I just want to make sure this is why =P
EDIT 2 - ANSWER?
After speaking a bit (in comments below), it seems the best option is to cache the information. With that being said, after researching I see that there are a lot of legalities when it comes to caching with google? Again I do not use the Google Map API so the legal aspect may not be relevant?
Would this be a good solution to implementing the cache (https://github.com/codeforamerica/ohana-api/wiki/Customizing-the-geocoding-configuration)?
Just want to make sure I implement the cache aspect properly =P Thanks!
Joe
ANSWER
So after some research and help from japed (see comments above), I found this documentation (https://github.com/codeforamerica/ohana-api/wiki/Customizing-the-geocoding-configuration) which clearly explained how to setup Redis with Geocoding for caching purposes. It also provided another link with more information to test it in development before deploy.
Thank you!
Joe
I'm working with rails, geocoder and gmap4rails. Trying to figure out how to show boundaries of an ward district area in UK. Found mapit - Mapit by mySociaty . Would be amazing if anyone could suggest or point me in the direction for creating a similar functions in rails. I'm especially interested in functions like 'Touching this area' as showed in the mapit.mysociety.org site.
Google maps also show boundaries of an area e.g. google map example Shows boundaries for 'Roath' area. is there anyway retrieve that data from google ?
I also tested a lot of addresses with geocoder, looking up in google. Tried to Geocode from address administrative_area_level_1 2 and 3 as well as in locality or sublocality.
The results were very unreliable. Tried at least 20 addresses from birmigham city - only some of them returned administrative_area_level1,2,3 or locality or sublocality and most of the time it was wrong data.
Another website that is sort of showing ward areas with in a city is www.streetlife.com I think it only works for UK users. basically it takes a postcode from a user and then in their map they show users district and other district around it, which is pretty cool :) Does anyone know how it works ? or how to get something like that working in rails ?
I would really love to discuss this topic in more depth and figure out the best answers for it.
This question at gis.stackexchange is probably of use to you if you wish to use rails. The "touching" feature is fundamentally a PostGIS query, so you could build on top of anything that allowed you to make SQL queries to a PostgreSQL database - GeoDjango (on which MapIt is built) makes this nice, but you could certainly accomplish the same in rails with work.
You won't be able to get those boundaries you see out of Google Maps, I believe, as it's proprietary.
Geocoding is a separate topic - you may want to look at things like OpenStreetMap's Nominatim (MapQuest have a version) or GeoNames, which could supply a dataset you could use with geocoder - Ordnance Survey also publish GB datasets that could be of use.
What proximity search options are there for Rails? (Perhaps with pros and cons of each?)
Is a postcode database the way to go?
or using Geocoding with a gem such as Geocoder?
Are there any best practises or gotchas to be aware of?
(Example usage, A Yellow Pages type app where businesses can list, and users can enter their postcode and find businesses that are close to them, or within a radius of specified miles.)
Update: The app is pretty much exactly like the example app above - Businesses can list in the app which is essential a directory (which will have categories for each type of business) and users can go to a category and sort the results by distance (after entering their postcode - so the businesses closest to them, gets shown first). There will be no searching by name or other criteria - it is a simple go to the 'Boxer Dog Breeders' page and sort by distance.
Well the answer depends on what you want to do. If you want simple proximity searches (within a radius and stuff) then the Geocoder gem is more than fine! Now, if you want more advanced search capabilities (polygon, multi-polygon searches etc) I would suggest to go with the PostrgeSQL database and the wonderful PostGIS extension. For use with Rails you should definitely check out the PostGIS adapter for ActiveRecord which comes from the author of a really nice gem called RGeo which uses the superfast libraries GEOS and Proj for the Geospatial calculations.
Otherwise if you find that you need a dedicated search server that has GIS capabilities then you should definitely use ElasticSearch and Ruby has a great gem to aid you with ES called Tire.
Hope I helped!
If you plan to add addational search criteria (eg. name of firm, category) or complex sorting and your DB will grow over 10000 I'm recommend using external search server. For example sphinx search + thinking sphinx.
Here is example of geosearching: http://freelancing-god.github.com/ts/en/geosearching.html
RoR model solutions (like Geocoder) are not very efficient with full text searching.
I don't have experience with Geocoding myself, but Alex Reisner's Geocoder gem looks like the best option, by a mile.
Geocoder is a complete geocoding solution for Ruby. With Rails it adds geocoding (by street or IP address), reverse geocoding (find street address based on given coordinates), and distance queries. It’s as simple as calling geocode on your objects, and then using a scope like Venue.near("Billings, MT").
Checkout the README for a full example on how to use it.
Newbie to Rails. I am building an app where users create events at a certain location, and plan to host on heroku. Other users can view events taking place within x miles of their latitude/longitude. I'm looking for a solution that would help me fetch all events happening in an x mile radius. The options seem to be Geocoder and Geokit. Geokit seems to be more popular but doesn't seem to be ready for Rails 3. Is there an obvious choice for what I'm trying to do?
You should use MongoDB, which is provided via a Heroku addon. With Mongo you then have access to spacial queries ("find me all the events within this circle"): http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Geospatial+Indexing
Unfortunately if you try to use Postgres's geospacial indexing you will find that Heroku does not offer it by default.
Take a look at Mongoid which enables you to do ActiveRecord-style representations of your documents in Mongo, and is very easy to get going with.