You may or may not have seen this too, but it is a big part of every geocoding Rails app I build:
http://geokit.rubyforge.org/ It adds a number of geocode-specific methods to ActiveRecord which allow you to query records based on their proximity to a location (e.g. @locations = Location.find(:all, :origin => @address, :within => @within, :order => 'distance')). It can also automatically geocode a location upon create using either Google, Yahoo, or GeoNames. You provide your API key and GeoKit handles the grunt work. Very handy tool. :-) Good luck with your project. On Aug 23, 7:54 am, Peter Laurens <[email protected]> wrote: > This is a broad question to get me started in the right direction: > > I would like to provide a location-based service so that users can tag > articles with a location (the place where the article took place), and > search (or list) articles by location. > > This raises some questions: > > - Presumably best practice is to allow the user not to type free-form > locations, but to help them pick a location from a list? > > - Are there any frameworks that handle geographical hierarchies? For > example, an article may be tagged with a city name, and a user may want > to list all articles for a county, we'd need to know all of the cities > in each county or we'd return nothing. > > The simplest thing may be to just have a flat list of places, with no > hierarchy, a list of cities and major towns for example? > > Any broad advice on what's out there to provide any > geographical/location services would be much appreciated! > > Thanks! > -- > Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
