geonames

Geonames Ruby API

Ruby library for Geonames Web Services

Created by TouchBase Counsulting to support GIS processes for Carpool Connect. Inspired by the Geonames Java Client API library.

Installing ruby-geonames

Install from the command line:

sudo gem install ruby-geonames

Examples

The following exercises several of the Geonames web services, full list of services.

Load the the geonames API

require 'geonames'

get list of places near by longitude/longitude location

places_nearby = Geonames::WebService.find_nearby_place_name 43.900120387, -78.882869834
p places_nearby

outputs:

[#<Geonames::Toponym:0x6c8c98 @population=nil, @geoname_id='6094578', @longitude=-78.849568878, @feature_class_name=nil, @country_name='Canada', @latitude=43.900120387, @feature_class='P', @country_code='CA', @name='Oshawa', @feature_code_name=nil, @elevation=nil, @distance=2.6679930307932, @alternate_names=nil, @feature_code='PPL'>]

get timezone for longitude/longitude location

timezone = Geonames::WebService.timezone 43.900120387, -78.882869834
p timezone

get country code for longitude/longitude location

country_code = Geonames::WebService.country_code 43.900120387, -78.882869834
p country_code

get country sub-division info for longitude/longitude location

country_subdivision = Geonames::WebService.country_subdivision 43.900120387, -78.882869834
p country_subdivision

get postal codes for a given location

postal_code_sc = Geonames::PostalCodeSearchCriteria.new
postal_code_sc.place_name = "Oshawa"
postal_codes = Geonames::WebService.postal_code_search postal_code_sc
p postal_codes

get nearby postal codes for a place name

postal_code_sc = Geonames::PostalCodeSearchCriteria.new
postal_code_sc.place_name = "Oshawa"
postal_codes_nearby = Geonames::WebService.find_nearby_postal_codes postal_code_sc
p postal_codes_nearby

Language Support

Geonames uses 'en' as the default locale. You can change the requested language like this:

Geonames.lang = 'de'

In a Rails application, you could set the language from the I18n.locale:

Geonames.lang = I18n.locale

Commercial Service Support

If you use the commercial service, you should put something like this in your configuration:

Geonames.username = 'username'
Geonames.base_url = 'http://ws.geonames.net'

In a Rails application, this could go into config/initializers/geonames.rb.

Contributors

1. Adam Wisniewski
2. Nicolas Marchildon (elecnix)
3. Chris Griego