= Nearby

A mashup of TokyoCabinet and {GeoNames.org}[http://www.geonames.org] for quick and easy Geocoding and proximity searches.

It runs fairly fast with the {GeoNames cities1000 database}[http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/], and perhaps with larger datasets too. It works with Ruby 1.8 and 1.9. Ruby 1.9 is significantly faster.

== Examples

=== Create a database

First, download a database from the {Geonames.org download server}[http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/]. Then:

Nearby::Database::create("my_db.tct", "cities1000.txt")

=== Simple Geocode

db = Nearby::Database.new("my_db.tct") db.get_place(:name => "Seattle", :region => "WA", :country => "US")

=== Get nearby places

db = Nearby::Database.new("my_db.tct") result = db.get_place(:name => "Seattle", :region => "WA", :country => "US").first

Find all places within 100km of Seattle

db.get_nearby(result, 100)

=== Full example require 'rubygems' require 'nearby'

Use the database from http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/AR.zip

Nearby::Database::create("argentina.tct", "AR.txt") db = Nearby::Database.new("argentina.tct") buenos_aires = db.get_place(:name => "Buenos Aires").first db.get_nearby(buenos_aires, 10).each do |r| puts r["asciiname"] end

=== TODO

Perform arbitrary queries
Allow distances in miles
Better approximate matching for place names.
Improve performance.
Make the code somewhat presentable - the first checkin is about 3 hours worth of code. :-)

== Credits

Created by {Norman Clarke}[mailto:[email protected]]