zipcode-finder

Goal

Build an rails-API to query zipcode by given gps, and encapsulate the system into docker.

How to run

1. Install docker
2. Run docker-compose up, this process takes about 10 minutes to build the index.
   It will display the process of data import and indexing like

db-seed_1  | 2017-12-15T23:23:37.907+0000	[##......................] zipcode_finder_development.zipcodes	73.4MB/588MB (12.5%)

And when it finishes, it will show a message

database initialization finished...

3. Aceess api via http://localhost:3000/zipcode?lat=40.6402399&lng=-74.44 and it should return json response

{
  zipcode: "07069"
}

if there's no result or there's an error, it should return

{
  zipcode: "No result"
}

How to stop and restart

1. After docker-compose up and finishing index, you can use Crtl C to stop it.
2. Run docker-compose start to restart the api.
3. Stop by running docker-compose stop.

Or you can use docker container to control them.

Other notes

Data source

US zipcode boundary shape files from Census Bureau

Preprocess data

Download the shape files and convert them to json files.

Why I use docker in this project

1. This project can be easily deployed in some computers that don't have rails and mongodb.
2. The json data of zipcode boundary can be stored into the container and automatically imported into mongodb.