Feature request: Async geocoding with sidekiq

[toxin20]

It would be convenient to be able to run the geocoding in a worker process like sidekiq or resque

There's a (slightly outdated) fork with sidekiq implemented:
https://github.com/rdeshpande/geocoder/blob/master/lib/geocoder/stores/active_record.rb#L241

Would this be possible at all?

[alexreisner]

I'm not sure this warrants an addition to Geocoder but perhaps something could be added to /examples?

[wasafiri]

Just worked through this - here's an example of how it can be done without adding code to Geocoder. I used Sidekiq - so you'll have to set it up first, but implementation is pretty quick. In this example, I'm using zipcode to look up latitude and longitude. You'll want to remove the geocoded_by and after_validation lines from your model if they're in there.

in the controller:

def create
  if object.save
    GeocoderWorker.perform_async(@object.id) unless @object.zipcode.blank?
  end
end

then create a worker:

#app/workers/GeocoderWorker.rb

class GeocoderWorker
  include Sidekiq::Worker

  def perform(object_id)
    object = object.find(object_id)

    coordinates = Geocoder.coordinates(object.zipcode)
    object.latitude = coordinates[0]
    object.longitude = coordinates[1]
    object.save!
  end
end

Feel free to add this to /examples.

[alexreisner]

@wasafiri thanks! I just added a simplified version of this as an example. I'm closing this issue for now, but if anyone wants to submit a pull request for a generalized worker that could be used for any geocoded ActiveRecord class (ie, accepts a class name as well as an ID) I'd certainly consider merging.

[richardonrails]

I also wanted to convert my sync ActiveRecord geocoding:

  geocoded_by :geocoded_by
  after_validation :geocode, if: :geocoded_by_changed?

To conditionally happen async. (e.g. When user is updating one record, do it sync, but when updating a batch of records, do it async)
One idea was to perhaps have some way to pass a flag when creating/updating, like model.save(geocode_async: true)

I understand that I could remove the ActiveRecord geocoding altogether and geocode manually in controllers, but that seems less convenient and I might forget a spot where I update model attributes and forget to geocode.

Ideas welcomed, otherwise I suppose I'll just have to remove all the convenient ActiveRecord bits.

[richardonrails]

One other thought is that even if I wanted it to always happen async, it'd be nice to be able to do that with like an async option on the geocoded_by flag. Or perhaps it could be done with a custom geocoder that always performs async, while still using the ActiveRecord integration?