I would like to ask which is the best solution for integrating google maps into ruby on rails apps. Is a specific gem worth it or should we write our own views for it?
Thanks for any input.
Fyi, I've finished a stable release of gmaps4rails.
See: https://github.com/apneadiving/Google-Maps-for-Rails
If your requirements are only to show google map of specific region, possibly with some markers, you can use Google Maps Static Image API, for example:
<img src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?size=255x255&maptype=roadmap&sensor=false&markers=color:blue|label:A|Chicago,IL&markers=color:purple|label:B|Hammond,IN" alt="Static, Marked Map of Chicago, Illinois and Hammond, Indiana with no Center and Zoom"></img>
The result is:
Here is a good article on subject. Also it's possible to specify geo location with latitude and longitude on markers:
markers=color:pink|label:A|55.783041, -137.500994
So in Rails you can use, for example, image_tag with google map image path helper:
= image_tag google_map_image_path, :alt => "Google Map"
I've used the YM4R, Georuby and spatial adapter gems with good results before.
see this description.
As of November 2012,the best gem for google map integration which I have found is geocoderIt provides object geocoding (by street or IP address), reverse geocoding (coordinates to street address), distance queries for ActiveRecord and Mongoid, result caching, and more. Designed for Rails but works with Sinatra and other Rack frameworks too.
You can get a railscasts too.
GoogleMaps gem is a nice one. It adds all basic JS scripts but a full-functional dynamic map can't be done without JS coding anyway.
There are also JS plugins, the most attractive of them are gmap3, Maplace.Js and gmaps.js.
Gems and plugins allow saving time on basic things but using them imposes some restrictions. For example, if Google makes changes in its Maps API, you have to wait for an updated version of the gem or plugin or integrate manually.
In fact, there is no major difficulty in integrating Google Maps into Rails app and IMHO it makes sence to do it without gems.
See this article for a detailed walkthrough on integrating Google Maps into ruby on rails apps: How to Integrate Google Maps into Ruby on Rails App.
As of December 2021, I recommend this method https://www.driftingruby.com/episodes/google-maps-api-with-stimulusjs that uses Stimulus.js
A few bits must be updated for Rails 7.
You don't need to do rails webpacker:install:stimulus, its already included via Hotwire
rename turbolinks to turbo
packs/application.js no longer exists, I have yet to find the best location for this. for now I put it in app/javascripts/controllers/index.js
import { Controller} from "stimulus" has become import { Controller } from "#hotwired/stimulus"
That's it
Related
I recently started playing with neo4j graph database in a Rails application and loved how rich the neo4j is. Although I saw that there is spatial support for neo4j via neo4j-spatial I haven't seen an example in a ruby application to get me started (using the ruby port of neo4j-spatial).
What I want to accomplish at first is to have a User model and a Poi model both having lat, lng attributes and make a query: Show me the Poi's that are at most 10km away from me
but I have no idea how I have to go about using the ruby gem. All I have found on the subject is this blog spot.
Does anyone know how am I supposed to do this in ruby? Thanks!
I think the ruby gem is a bit out of date. I suggest either forking and updating it, or use straight Java APIs for that, see the original java methods that the Spatial ruby just wraps.
Lemme know if you want to contribute and update, would be great!
I wrote the gem as a simple wrapper. It depends on neo4j.rb so you get all the necessary ruby on rails capabilities from that. Then it includes the spatial dependencies also. In addition it provides utilities for wrapping OSM import and export and dynamic layer support. It does not provide utilities to wrap the simple point layer which you seem to want. However you kind of get that for free anyway with jruby directly wrapping all of the java API for you.
My recommendation would be to use neo4j-spatial.rb and then use the neo4j.rb capabilities to build your model. Access the simple point layer directly from jruby and just add your new nodes to that. Then you can call the distance search function, also from jruby.
I will be implementing a search feature on a project to allow a user to find the nearest store based on driving time given a input physical address. I would prefer showing a Google maps of the closest dealers. I am using PostgreSQL 8.4.x with Rails 2.1. Can anyone recommend a good solution (Ruby gem, Maps API such Google, PostGIS database, etc)? Thanks, Chirag
I generally use Geokit:
https://github.com/andre/geokit-gem
Or Geokit Rails 3:
https://github.com/jlecour/geokit-rails3
Then of course, I use my gem gmaps4rails
Haven't really done anything like that before, but these resources should be quite useful :
http://ym4r.rubyforge.org/tutorial_ym4r_georuby.html
https://github.com/apneadiving/Google-Maps-for-Rails
I'm searching for a good solution for integrating google maps into a ruby on rails 2.3 app. I know there's a project called ym4r but it seems old and not so maintained. Should I use directly the Google API itself?
Thanks!
Fyi, I've just released a new version of gmaps4rails.
It's based on Rails 3 and uses Google maps API V3:
https://github.com/apneadiving/Google-Maps-for-Rails
In my experience, I have used an API like Geokit to geocode the data, but when it comes to building the map, use the JavaScript API directly. It gives you the most control and allows you to build the map exactly how you want.
You can check out cartographer plugin, it supports painless integration of google maps v3 in rails , http://grati.la/cartorbflw
you could try the Geocoder gem for a Rails application.
I would like to do a very simple task: add some markers in a Google Map using a list of addresses from an array.
I have been thinking about generating the Google Maps JavaScript API code using ruby (printf) but this does not seem like a very clean and beautiful solution...
I have read about YM4R for Ruby on Rails... my project is pretty simple and I have never worked with Ruby on Rails... I have also never used JQuery... but I am very willing to learn to use this tools :)
What do you think will be the best approach to generating the markers?
Fyi, I've just released a new version of gmaps4rails.
It's based on Rails 3 and uses Google maps API V3:
https://github.com/apneadiving/Google-Maps-for-Rails
YM4R is a good choice. In the end you'll just need a few lines of code to get this done, as outlined in the tutorial. Even given your background, you should be able to follow the examples and get things working.
We also use the Geokit plugin, which is a little more complicated because of the set-up. But if you already have the lat/lon, you're good.
I've used GeoKit and acts_as_geocodable in the past. I like GeoKit, but its missing nicer features like named_scopes. I'm not a huge fan of acts_as_geocodable because it duplicates address data into its own table.
Lately, these gems seem under-maintained.
What are some actively maintained gems out there?
I maintain the Geocoder gem:
http://rubygems.org/gems/geocoder
Source code:
http://github.com/alexreisner/geocoder
I can tell you it's actively maintained because I'm working on Rails 3 compatibility as I write this! It's designed to be very simple, while providing the most commonly-used geocoding features. It provides named scopes and doesn't duplicate any data.
Plugin version of geocoder is working great for me. Note that you have to rename "scope" to "named_scope" to get it to work in anything less than rails 3.
There is a 'geokit-rails3' gem can also do geocoding and reverse geocoding:
https://github.com/jlecour/geokit-rails3
It provide multiple geocoders like GoogleGeocoder and YahooGeocoder, So you can choose the most proper one according to your which map you are rendering.