10 min read

Building a kiosk locator feature for your site

Your company has just deployed 500 multi-purpose payment kiosks around the country, cash cows for the milking. Another 500 more are on the way, promising to bring in the big bucks for all the hardworking employees in the company. Naturally your boss wants as many people as possible to know about them and use them. The problem is that while the marketing machine churns away on the marvels and benefits of the kiosks, the customers need to know where they are located to use them. He commands you:

“Find a way to show our users where the nearest kiosks to him are, and directions to reach them!”

What you have is a database of all the 500 locations where the kiosks are located, by their full address. What can you do?

Requirements overview

Quickly gathering your wits, you penned down the following quick requirements:

  1. Each customer who comes to your site needs to be able to find the closest kiosk to his or her current location.
  2. He or she might also want to know the closest kiosk to any location.
  3. You want to let the users determine the radius of the search.
  4. Finding the locations of the closest kiosks, you need to show him how to reach them.
  5. You have 500 kiosks now, (and you need to show where they are) but another 500 will be coming, in 10s and 20s, so the location of the kiosks need to be specified during the entry of the kiosks. You want to put all of these on some kind of map.

Sounds difficult? Only if you didn’t know about web mashups!

Design

The design for this first project is rather simple. We will build a simple database application using Rails and create a main Kiosk class in which to store the kiosk information including its address, longitude, and latitude information. After populating the database with the kiosk information and address, we will use a geolocation service to discover its longitude and latitude. We store the information in the same table. Next, we will take the kiosk information and mash it up with Google Maps and display the kiosks as pushpins on the online map and place its information inside an info box attached to each pushpin.

Mashup APIs on the menu

In this article we will be using the following services to create a ‘find closest’ mashup plugin:

  • Google Maps APIs including geocoding services
  • Yahoo geocoding services (part of Yahoo Maps APIs)
  • Geocoder.us geocoding services
  • Geocoder.ca geocoding services
  • Hostip.info

Google Maps

Google Maps is a free web-based mapping service provided by Google. It provides a map that can be navigated by dragging the mouse across it and zoomed in and out using the mouse wheel or a zoom bar. It has three forms of views—map, satellite and a hybrid of map and satellite. Google Maps is coded almost entirely in JavaScript and XML and Google provides a free JavaScript API library that allows developers to integrate Google Maps into their own applications. Google Maps APIs also provide geocoding capabilities, that is, they able to convert addresses to longitude and latitude coordinates.

We will be using two parts of Google Maps:

  • Firstly to geocode addresses as part of GeoKit’s APIs
  • Secondly to display the found kiosk on a customized Google Maps map

Yahoo Maps

Yahoo Maps is a free mapping service provided by Yahoo. Much like Google Maps it also provides a map that is navigable in a similar way and also provides an extensive set of APIs. Yahoo’s mapping APIs range from simply including the map directly from the Yahoo Maps website, to Flash APIs and JavaScript APIs. Yahoo Maps also provides geocoding services. We will be using Yahoo Maps geocoding services as part of GeoKit’s API to geocode addresses.

Geocoder.us

Geocoder.us is a website that provides free geocoding of addresses and intersections in the United States. It relies on Geo::Coder::US, a Perl module available for download from the CPAN and derives its data from the TIGER/Line data set, public-domain data from the US Census Bureau. Its reliability is higher in urban areas but lower in the other parts of the country. We will be using Geocoder.us as part of GeoKit’s API to geocode addresses.

Geocoder.ca

Geocoder.ca is a website that provides free geocoding of addresses in the United States and Canada. Like Geocoder.us. it uses data from TIGER/Line but in addition, draws data from GeoBase, the Canadian government-related initiative that provides geospatial information on Canadian territories. We will be using Geocoder.ca as part of GeoKit’s API to geocode addresses.

Hostip.info

Hostip.info is a website that provides free geocoding of IP addresses. Hostip.info offers an HTTP-based API as well as its entire database for integration at no cost. We will be using Hostip.info as part of GeoKit’s API to geocode IP addresses.

GeoKit

GeoKit is a Rails plugin that enables you to build location-based applications. For this article we will be using GeoKit for its geocoding capabilities in two ways:

  • To determine the longitude and latitude coordinates of the kiosk from its given address
  • To determine the longitude and latitude coordinates of the user from his or her IP address

GeoKit is a plugin to your Rails application so installing it means more or less copying the source files from the GeoKit Subversion repository and running through an installation script that adds certain default parameters in your environment.rb file.

To install the GeoKit, go to your Rails application folder and execute this at the command line:

$./script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/geokit/trunk

This will copy the necessary files to your RAILS_ROOT/vendor/plugins folder and run the install.rb script.

Find closest mashup plugin with Ruby on Rails

Configuring GeoKit

After installing GeoKit you will need to configure it properly to allow it to work. GeoKit allows you to use a few sets of geocoding APIs, including Yahoo, Google, Geocoder.us, and Geocoder.ca.

These geocoding providers can be used directly or through a cascading failover sequence. Using Yahoo or Google requires you to register for an API key but they are free. Geocoder.us is also free under certain terms and conditions but both Geocoder.us and Geocoder.ca have commercial accounts. In this article I will briefly go through how to get an application ID from Yahoo and a Google Maps API key from Google.

Getting an application ID from Yahoo

Yahoo’s application ID is needed for any Yahoo web service API calls. You can use the same application ID for all services in the same application or multiple applications or one application ID per service.

To get the Yahoo application ID, go to https://developer.yahoo.com/wsregapp/index.php and provide the necessary information. Note that for this application you don’t need user authentication. Once you click on submit, you will be provided an application ID.

Getting a Google Maps API key from Google

To use Google Maps you will need to have a Google Maps API key. Go to http://www.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html. After reading the terms and conditions you will be asked to give a website URL that will use the Google Maps API.

For geocoding purposes, this is not important (anything will do) but to display Google Maps on a website, this is important because Google Maps will not display if the URL doesn’t match. However all is not lost if you have provided the wrong URL at first; you can create any number of API keys from Google.

Configuring evironment.rb

Now that you have a Yahoo application ID and a Google Maps API key, go to environment.rb under the RAILS_ROOT/config folder. Installing GeoKit should have added the following to your environment.rb file:

# Include your application configuration below
# These defaults are
used in GeoKit::Mappable.distance_to and in acts_as_mappable
GeoKit::default_units = :miles
GeoKit::default_formula = :sphere
# This is the timeout value in seconds to be used for calls to the
geocoder web
# services. For no timeout at all, comment out the setting. The
timeout unit is in seconds.
# GeoKit::Geocoders::timeout = 3
# These settings are used if web service calls must be routed through
a proxy.
# These setting can be nil if not needed, otherwise, addr and port
must be filled in at a minimum. If the proxy requires authentication,
 the username and password can be provided as well.
GeoKit::Geocoders::proxy_addr = nil
GeoKit::Geocoders::proxy_port = nil
GeoKit::Geocoders::proxy_user = nil
GeoKit::Geocoders::proxy_pass = nil
# This is your yahoo application key for the Yahoo Geocoder
# See http://developer.yahoo.com/faq/index.html#appid and
http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/rest/V1/geocode.html
GeoKit::Geocoders::yahoo = <YOUR YAHOO APP ID>
# This is your Google Maps geocoder key.
# See http://www.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html and
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/#Geocoding_Examples
GeoKit::Geocoders::google = <YOUR GOOGLE MAPS KEY>
# This is your username and password for geocoder.us
# To use the free service, the value can be set to nil or false. For
usage tied to an account, the value should be set to
username:password.
# See http://geocoder.us and
http://geocoder.us/user/signup
GeoKit::Geocoders::geocoder_us = false
# This is your authorization key for geocoder.ca.
# To use the free service, the value can be set to nil or false. For
usage tied to an account, set the value to the key obtained from
Geocoder.ca
# See http://geocoder.ca and
http://geocoder.ca/?register=1
GeoKit::Geocoders::geocoder_ca = false
# This is the order in which the geocoders are called in a failover
scenario
# If you only want to use a single geocoder, put a single symbol in
the array.
# Valid symbols are :google, :yahoo, :us, and :ca
# Be aware that there are Terms of Use restrictions on how you can
use the various geocoders. Make sure you read up on relevant Terms of
Use for each geocoder you are going to use.
GeoKit::Geocoders::provider_order = [:google,:yahoo]

Go to the lines where you are asked to put in the Yahoo and Google keys and change the values accordingly. Make sure the keys are within apostrophes.

Then go to the provider order and put in the order you want (the first will be tried; if that fails it will go to the next until all are exhausted):

GeoKit::Geocoders::provider_order = [:google,:yahoo]

This completes the configuration of GeoKit.

YM4R/GM

YM4R/GM is another Rails plugin, one that facilitates the use of Google Maps APIs. We will be using YM4R/GM to display the kiosk locations on a customized Google Map. This API essentially wraps around the Google Maps APIs but also provides additional features to make it easier to use from Ruby. To install it, go to your Rails application folder and execute this at the command line:

$./script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ym4r/Plugins/GM/trunk/ym4r_gm

During the installation, the JavaScript files found in the RAILS_ROOT/vendors/plugin/javascript folder will be copied to the RAILS_ROOT/public/javascripts folder.

A gmaps_api_key.yml file is also created in the RAILS_ROOT/config folder. This file is a YAML representation of a hash, like the database.yml file in which you can set up a test, development, and production environment. This is where you will put in your Google Maps API key (in addition to the environment.rb you have changed earlier).

For your local testing you will not need to change the values but once you deploy this in production on an Internet site you will need to put in a real value according to your domain.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here