# Geocoder **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [March 17, 2010, 5:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/geocoder/185299 "2010-03-17T17:55:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![snantz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/c2a13f/32.png) [@snantz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/snantz)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 5:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/geocoder/185299/1 "2010-03-17T17:55:03Z")
I am trying to write a script that uses the rails-geocoder gem to grab the latitude and longitude so I can store those values in my own local table, but am having trouble getting anything to work or to find any decent documentation describing or even helping me accomplish what I need done. Does anybody have any suggestions? I have found this example: [http://geocoder.rubyforge.org/](http://geocoder.rubyforge.org/) that seems pretty straight forward. I have a list of cities and states and am just trying to loop through each and get the lat lon values. Thanks, -S ---
**Author:** ![snantz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/c2a13f/32.png) [@snantz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/snantz)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 7:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/geocoder/185299/2 "2010-03-19T19:29:39Z")
Shandy N. wrote: > I am trying to write a script that uses the rails-geocoder gem to grab > the latitude and longitude so I can store those values in my own local > table, but am having trouble getting anything to work or to find any > decent documentation describing or even helping me accomplish what I > need done. Does anybody have any suggestions? I have found this example: > [http://geocoder.rubyforge.org/](http://geocoder.rubyforge.org/) that seems pretty straight forward. I > have a list of cities and states and am just trying to loop through each > and get the lat lon values. Thanks, > > -S I think that geocoder is for full addresses. For just cities, you could use worldkit. Sending a request like so: [http://brainoff.com/worldkit/geocoder/rest/?city=San+Diego,CA,US](http://brainoff.com/worldkit/geocoder/rest/?city=San+Diego,CA,US) will get you a response like this with the lat & long for the city: rdf:RDF geo:Point geo:long-117.191848\ geo:lat32.751575\ \ \ You have to make sure there are no spaces in the city field. So cycling through your list of cities, you’d make sure to concatenate multi word cities with a ‘+’ before sending the request. ---
**Author:** ![snantz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/c2a13f/32.png) [@snantz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/snantz)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 12:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/geocoder/185299/3 "2010-03-20T00:02:39Z")
My last post wasn’t actually relevant to ruby so here’s a little snippet using ruby, sqlite and worldkit. I’m just learning ruby myself so this might not be the best way to do this. require ‘open-uri’ require ‘sqlite3’ # make a table with two records, Dallas, TX and Lansing, MI database = SQLite3::Database.new( “cities.database” ) database.execute( “create table city\_names (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT, state TEXT, country TEXT, latitude NUMERIC, long NUMERIC);”) database.execute( “insert into city\_names (name, state, country) values (‘Dallas’, ‘TX’, ‘US’)”) database.execute( “insert into city\_names (name, state, country) values (‘Lansing’, ‘MI’, ‘US’)”) class Geocoder def initialize(db) @db = db @rows = db.execute( “select \* from city\_names”) end def update\_coords @link = “” @rows.each do |item| @link = “#{item[1]},#{item[2]},#{item[3]}” open(“[http://brainoff.com/worldkit/geocoder/rest/?city=#{@link}](http://brainoff.com/worldkit/geocoder/rest/?city=#%7B@link%7D)”) do |f| sd = f.read @long = sd.scan(/long\>(._)\(._)\ **Author:** ![snantz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/c2a13f/32.png) [@snantz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/snantz)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2010, 9:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/geocoder/185299/4 "2010-03-20T09:24:30Z") Hi, here is an ActiveRecord based solution [gist:338506 · GitHub](http://gist.github.com/338506) It is based on Peter S.'s solution. It also populates most of the 50 cities found at [Profiles of the 50 Largest Cities of the United States](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108477.html) Here is the same thing, but using the geocoder gem that Shandy asked about > I also added some use cases for it that work with the data it populates into the db, such as dallas.distance\_to austin texas\_cities = City.find\_all\_by\_state(‘TX’).map { |city| city.lat\_lon } Geocoder.geographic\_center texas\_cities near\_sacramento = City.find\_by\_name(‘Sacramento’).nearbys(100) You can see the gem homepage at [GitHub - alexreisner/geocoder: Complete Ruby geocoding solution.](http://github.com/alexreisner/geocoder) Wasn’t very straightforward how to use this outside of Rails, but I eventually got it. (had to do a little code digging to understand the errors and query some mailing lists to find solutions) $ gem install rails-geocoder Then get a google api key at > **[الأسئلة الشائعة حول &qout;منصة خرائط Google&qout;  | ...](https://developers.google.com/maps/faq?csw=1&hl=ar)** The license says your application must be available to the public, free or charge, otherwise you should be using > **[הפלטפורמה של מפות Google  |  Google Maps Platform  | ...](https://developers.google.com/maps/)** > > תיאורים של הפלטפורמה של מפות Google They want you to list a site your app will be available through. I gave them the URL of the gist the example is hosted at :)~ Anyway, a very simple program that correctly uses the gem to get results: require ‘net/http’ require ‘rubygems’ require ‘active\_record’ require ‘geocoder’ Geocoder::GOOGLE\_MAPS\_API\_KEY = ‘your key goes here’ p Geocoder.fetch\_coordinates(“Wichita,KS,US”)