opensoul.org - Geocoding as easy as 1-2... Comments

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by Chad

2008-11-04T17:08:32Z

The folks with the issue of Geocode.geocoder in the environment file:

You are likely placing the call inside of the Rails::Initializer.run loop Place it AFTER.

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by Daniel

2008-07-22T17:17:41Z

I think I may know where the problem is.

I was looking at acts_as_geocodable.rb and found:

def to_location
         returning Graticule::Location.new do |location|
do |attr|
             location.send "#{attr}=", geo_attribute(attr)
           end
         end
       end

Which has the attributes hard coded in the array. Therefore, if your Model doesn’t have these exact attributes, then attach_geocode will fail and return nil. As a test, I just created instance methods in my model to return the values of my attributes based on the names in the array and now it works just fine.

It seems to be that this was somewhat documented in the README file and I must have missed it.

The problem I have is that my models looks something like this:

class Address < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :postal_code end

class PostalCode < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :state end

class State < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :country end

So, if I want to get the zip, city, and state of an address, I need:

address.postal_code.zip_code address.postal_code.state.iso2 address.postal_code.state.country.iso2

respectively.

If I were to use the recommendations in the README, how can I do this:

class Address < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :postal_code acts_as_geocodable :address => {:street => :street1, :locality => :postal_code.city, :region => :postal_code.state.iso2, :postal_code => :postal_code.zip_code } end

That doesn’t work for me unless instead I just define corresponding instance methods.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by Daniel

2008-07-22T15:42:59Z

I have the same problem reported about geocoder.nil:

NoMethodError: You have a nil object when you didn’t expect it! The error occurred while evaluating nil.latitude from (irb):6

However, this is on OSX with the latest Rails, Gratitude and ActsAsGeocoder.

However, I don’t think the issue is that Geocode.geocoder is not sticking because when on the same console session I type

Geocode.geocoder

I does return:

=> #, @key=”my-key”

So, it seems the problem is not related to the “stickiness” in environment.rb (neither development nor production). The problem seems to be somewhere in the AR methods added to the model not being able to access Geocode.geocoder.

Any clues anyone?

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by skoppy

2008-06-26T16:10:23Z

I’m running into the same problem that John Small is. Whenever I try to restart the server I get “Unititialized constant Geocode”

I’ve also tried adding “require ‘graticule’” to the environment.rb file as well with no luck.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by Brandon

2008-05-28T19:50:14Z

John,

Did you restart the server? Any time you install a plugin, you need to restart script/server.

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by John Small

2008-05-21T16:53:53Z

I’ve installed the latest acts_as_geocodable and the latest Graticule, run the migrations, added the line into environment.rb (in development mode) and It Doesn’t Work™.

To start checking it works with my models I’ve uncommented the task in acts_as_geocodeable_tasks.rake, purely as a simple way to load my environment and test a model can become geocodeable. But when the environment loads I get “Unititialized constant Geocode”. Now I’m a new Rails user so there’s obviously some Rails idiom which is assumed in the instruction “just add this to your environment.rb”, but I don’t know what it is. Please clue me in, there must be something more I need to add to the environment.rb to get it to work.

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by John

2008-03-18T03:02:59Z

Something weird is going on… I can’t start the mongrel after installing the acts_as_geocodable plugin, it says that Graticules 0.2.0 is required and I have the 0.2.6 installed.. what am I doing wrong??

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by Brandon

2007-03-15T03:08:33Z

Peter,

Sorry for the late response, I fell off the face of the earth for a week. You should be able to order the results by passing :order => 'distance' to the find. Let me know if that doesn’t work.

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by PETER

2007-03-08T02:09:23Z

Your approach of separating concerns is great.

It seems to me that being able to order results by distance as well as selecting by :within is important. Do you have plans to do this? Suggestions on how I might do it?

Thanks again

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by James Stewart

2007-02-17T16:18:16Z

Any thoughts of adding :through support for acts_as_geocodable? For example, say I have events which belong_to locations, it would be good to be able to search for forthcoming events based on their location.

I like the way acts_as_locateable implements that, but this plugin overall looks more appropriate for my needs.

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by Shawn

2007-02-15T16:02:47Z

Hi Brandon,

Tested out the geocoder.nil? issue on Win XP. It seems to only occur when the server is started in development mode. Production mode, the object seems to stay created.

I tested using Mongrel and WEBrick with same results.

Hope this helps!

Shawn

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by Shawn

2007-02-15T15:39:40Z

Hi Brandon,

Sure – I’m kinda, sorta new to ROR but will try some things to see if cattr’s disappear on some other classes.

Here’s another item relating to Yahoo geocode requests…

In acts_as_geocoable.rb, the full_address method has a ”\n” after the street. This was causing Yahoo to return ZIP level precision vs STREET level. Google didn’t seem to mind.

Orignal:

def full_address returning(””) { |address| address << ”#{geo_attribute(:street)}\n” unless geo_attribute(:street).blank? address << ”#{geo_attribute(:city)}, ” unless geo_attribute(:city).blank? address << ”#{geo_attribute(:region)} ” unless geo_attribute(:region).blank? address << ”#{geo_attribute(:postal_code)}” unless geo_attribute(:postal_code).blank? address << ” #{geo_attribute(:country)}” unless geo_attribute(:country).blank? }.strip end

Changed to:

Return the entire address in one string. def full_address returning(””) { |address| address << ”#{geo_attribute(:street)},” unless geo_attribute(:street).blank? address << ”#{geo_attribute(:city)}, ” unless geo_attribute(:city).blank? address << ”#{geo_attribute(:region)} ” unless geo_attribute(:region).blank? address << ”#{geo_attribute(:postal_code)}” unless geo_attribute(:postal_code).blank? address << ” #{geo_attribute(:country)}” unless geo_attribute(:country).blank? }.strip end

Basically I replaced the ”\n” with a ”,”. Yahoo now returns a STREET level precision on valid address. Google seems okay to.

Hope this helps!

Shawn

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by Brandon

2007-02-14T16:17:16Z

Shawn,

That’s really odd. Looking through the code, I have no clue what would be causing that.

I don’t have immediate access to a Windows environment, so could you (or anyone else) help me debug it?

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by Shawn

2007-02-14T00:47:10Z

Hi,

Thanks for the plugin! :)

I’ve installed Graticule and acts_as_geocodable but I can’t seem to get it to run reliably.

I’m on Windows XP, using a Yahoo Application id.

It seems setting Geocode.geocoder in the environment.rb isn’t “sticking”. It set when the app is loaded but is nil when Geocode.rb is hit as part of the save process.

I’m working around this by using:

def self.geocode(location)

if geocoder.nil?
    self.geocoder = Graticule.service(:yahoo).new 'Dd0Ib1zV34G4ypZoQ_DAedMH5uU7IejCvf5Mzw8llr2YkKFZzkymiyumE_OJ'
 end

...

end

Thanks!

Shawn

Comment on 'Geocoding as easy as 1-2...' by jim

2007-02-13T15:37:00Z

Great work. This is what I wanted to do but was short on time when I wrote acts_as_geocode. You guys did a much more thorough job. I was just doing something quick to make my life easier on some real estate projects.

Now I will switch soon.