US Zipcode API for Ruby?

Does anyone know of API (and database) for Ruby to provide information
(city/state) for zipcodes? Also helpful would be zipcodes within a
given
radious.

If something doesn’t exist natively for Ruby I might utilize a web
service.

There is a 40,000+ zip code database in CivicSpace labs that has lat and
long by zip code:

http://civicspacelabs.org/home/developers/download

http://civicspacelabs.org/releases/zipcodes/zipcodes-csv-10-Aug-2004.zip

Distance between two points (lat, long) is calculated using the
Haversine formula:

dlon = lon2 - lon1

dlat = lat2 - lat1
a = (sin(dlat/2))^2 + cos(lat1) * cos(lat2) * (sin(dlon/2))^2
c = 2 * atan2(sqrt(a), sqrt(1-a))
d = R * c

See the following link or google for more:

Classroom Resources - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

Excellent! The only thing remaining is an efficient algorithm for a
search
for all zipcodes within a given radius.

I suppose one technique might be to first narrow the databse search
within a
given a given square latitude/longitude range and then filter those
results
by testing that they are within the given circle radius

The only thing remaining is an efficient algorithm for a search for all zipcodes within a given radius.

ᐈ Betting 101: A Beginner's Journey into the World of Wagers 🥇 eNews

’ THIS VARIABLE SETS THE RADIUS IN MILES iRadius = 150 LatRange =
iradius / ((6076 / 5280) * 60) LongRange = iRadius /
(((cos(cdbl(iStartLat * _ 3.141592653589 / 180)) * 6076.) /
5280.) * 60) LowLatitude = istartlat - LatRange HighLatitude =
istartlat + LatRange LowLongitude = istartlong - LongRange
HighLongitude = istartlong + LongRange

Excellent! The only thing remaining is an efficient algorithm for a search
for all zipcodes within a given radius.

Using Ruby and SQLite3:

pabs@halcyon:~/proj/zip> ./import.rb zipcode.{csv,db}
pabs@halcyon:~/proj/zip> ./find.rb zipcode.db 22003 3
“city”,“state”,“zip”,“distance (mi)”
“Annandale”,“VA”,“22003”,“0.0”
“Springfield”,“VA”,“22161”,“1.62363604423677”
“Springfield”,“VA”,“22151”,“1.87190097838136”
“Falls Church”,“VA”,“22042”,“2.97362028549975”

Here’s the code for each piece (also available at the URL
http://pablotron.org/files/zipfind.tar.gz):

---- import.rb ----
#!/usr/bin/env ruby

load libraries

require ‘rubygems’ rescue nil
require ‘sqlite3’

constants

SCAN_RE =
/“(\d{5})”,“([^”]+)“,”(…)“,”([\d.-]+)“,”([\d.-]+)“,”([\d-]+)“,”(\d)"/
SQL = “INSERT INTO zips(zip, city, state, lat, long, timezone, dst)
VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)”
TABLE_SCHEMA = "CREATE TABLE zips (
id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,

zip       VARCHAR(5)  NOT NULL,
city      TEXT        NOT NULL,
state     VARCHAR(2)  NOT NULL,
lat       FLOAT       NOT NULL,
long      FLOAT       NOT NULL,
timezone  INTEGER     NOT NULL,
dst       BOOLEAN     NOT NULL

);"

handle command-line arguments

unless ARGV.size == 2
$stderr.puts “Usage: #$0 ”
exit -1
end
csv_path, db_path = ARGV

load database, create zip table and prepared statement

db = SQLite3::Database.new(db_path)
db.query(TABLE_SCHEMA)
st = db.prepare(SQL)

parse CSV and add each line to the database

db.transaction {
File.read(csv_path).scan(SCAN_RE).each { |row| st.execute(*row) }
}

---- find.rb ----
#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require ‘rubygems’
require ‘sqlite3’

MI_R = 1.15

grab base zip code

unless ARGV.size > 1
$stderr.puts “Usage: #$0 [radius]”
exit -1
end
db_path, src_zip, radius = ARGV
radius = (radius || 50).to_i

open database

db = SQLite3::Database.new(db_path)

get lat/long for specified zip code

sql = “SELECT lat, long FROM zips WHERE zip = ?”
src_lat, src_long = db.get_first_row(sql, src_zip).map { |v| v.to_f }

unless src_lat && src_long
$stderr.puts “Unknown zip code ‘#{src_zip}’”
exit -1
end

calculate min/max lat/long

ret, range = [], radius / 69.0

get all codes within given rectangle

sql = “SELECT lat, long, city, state, zip
FROM zips
WHERE lat > ? AND lat < ?
AND long > ? AND long < ?”
args = [src_lat - range, src_lat + range,
src_long - range, src_long + range]

db.prepare(sql).execute(*args).each do |row|
# get row values, convert lat/long to floats
dst_lat, dst_long, dst_zip, dst_city, dist_st = row
dst_lat, dst_long = dst_lat.to_f, dst_long.to_f

# calculate distance between zip codes.  if dst_zip is within the
# specified radius, then add it to the list of results
d = Math.sqrt((dst_lat - src_lat) ** 2 + (dst_long - src_long) ** 2)
ret << [dst_zip, dst_city, dist_st, d * 69.0] if d <= range

end

sort results by distance

ret = ret.sort { |a, b| a[-1] <=> b[-1] }

print out results as a CSV

puts ‘“city”,“state”,“zip”,“distance (mi)”’,
ret.map { |row| ‘"’ << row.join(‘“,”’) << ‘"’ }

I suppose one technique might be to first narrow the databse search within a
given a given square latitude/longitude range and then filter those results
by testing that they are within the given circle radius

That’s all the code above does. There’s some room for optimization
there; for example, you could create a region field, then calculate list
of regions that intersect with the search radius. If you index on the
region field, then the query becomes essentially an index lookup instead
of a lat/long comparison (you still have to do the second distance
calculation, of course).

Anyway, I didn’t do that because the code above runs pretty quickly on
my machine.

On Wednesday 14 December 2005 10:46 pm, Paul D. wrote:

pabs@halcyon:~/proj/zip> ./find.rb zipcode.db 22003 3

So where does one find zipcode.db?

SteveT

Steve L.

[email protected]

Excellent! You beat me to it. My approach to import was somewhat
different, your probably has the advantage of a transaction per row.

require ‘csv’
require ‘dbi’

DBI.connect(“DBI:ADO:Provider=SQLOLEDB;Data Source=localhost;Initial
Catalog=USZipCodes;User Id=test;Password=test”) do | dbh |

sql = "INSERT INTO ZipData (zipcode, city, state, latitude, 

longitude,
timezone, dst) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)"
dbh.prepare(sql) do | sth |
begin
rdr = CSV.open(“zipcode.csv”, “r”)
header = rdr.shift # skip header row
rdr.each do |row|
sth.execute(row[0], row[1], row[2], row[3], row[4], row[5],
row[6])
end
ensure
CSV.close unless CSV.nil?
end
end
end

So where does one find zipcode.db?

In an earlier post Dan D. shared this:

There is a 40,000+ zip code database in CivicSpace labs that has lat
and long by zip code:

http://civicspacelabs.org/home/developers/download

http://civicspacelabs.org/releases/zipcodes/zipcodes-csv-10-Aug-2004.zip

CivicSpaceLabs have that zip code file of about 40,000 zips. Commercial
packages and the USPS sell zip code programs and database that are over
twice that large. I believe the CivicSpaceLabs zip code database comes
out of the US Census Bureau. The 4GuysFromRolla article previously given
gave a url to the Gazetterr which is broken - I think this is the
correct url:

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/gazetteer/gazette.html
http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/zips.txt
http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/zips.zip

Maybe will will see a geo-tagging based ruby quiz in the future …

On Wednesday 14 December 2005 10:46 pm, Paul D. wrote:

pabs@halcyon:~/proj/zip> ./find.rb zipcode.db 22003 3

So where does one find zipcode.db?

It’s generated from the zipcode CSV pasted in a previous email.

That’s what the “./import.rb zipcode.{csv,db}” line does; imports the
contents of the CSV into the database.

Incidentally, I also wrote a quick script to calculate the distance
between two zip codes. It works the same as the others:

pabs@halcyon:~/proj/zip/zipfind> ./len.rb ./zipcode.db 22003 97405
3187.72 miles

I packaged all of them up at the following URL:

http://pablotron.org/files/zipfind-0.2.tar.gz

Here’s the OpenPGP signature for that tarball:

http://pablotron.org/files/zipfind-0.2.tar.gz.asc

Hope that helps.