GeonamesDump

GeonamesDump import geographic data from geonames project into your application, avoiding to use external service like google maps. It's a "gem" version of the application brownbeagle/geonames. Now you only need to include the dependency into your Gemfile and your project will include geonames.

You're free to use geocoder or geokit or any other geocoding solution.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "geonames_dump", git: "https://github.com/murb/geonames_dump.git", branch: "develop", require: "Geonames"

And then execute:

bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

gem install geonames_dump

To speed up imports with > 10x add the active-import gem:

gem 'activerecord-import'

(this gem will add #bulk_import to all AR classes; so make sure that works, otherwise it will go with the traditional flow)

Usage

Create models and migration files

rails generate geonames:install

Import data (takes a loonnnng time!), it will download data, import countries and many features (Countries, Cities having more than 15000 people, Admin1 (first administrative subdivision), Admin2 (second level administrative subdivision))

rake geonames:install

If you need more fine grained control over the installation process you can run individual geoname rake tasks instead of the all-in-one install :

$ rake -T | grep geonames

rake geonames:import:all               # Import ALL geonames data.
rake geonames:import:many              # Import most of geonames data.

rake geonames:import:admin1            # Import admin1 codes
rake geonames:import:admin2            # Import admin2 codes
rake geonames:import:cities            # Import all cities, regardless of population.
rake geonames:import:cities1000        # Import cities with population greater than 1000
rake geonames:import:cities15000       # Import cities with population greater than 15000
rake geonames:import:cities500        # Import cities with population greater than 1000
rake geonames:import:cities5000        # Import cities with population greater than 5000
rake geonames:import:countries         # Import countries informations
rake geonames:import:features          # Import feature data.
rake geonames:import:alternate_names   # Import alternate names
rake geonames:import:hierarchy         # Import hierarchies

rake geonames:truncate:all             # Truncate all geonames data.
rake geonames:truncate:countries       # Truncate countries informations
rake geonames:truncate:admin1          # Truncate admin1 codes
rake geonames:truncate:admin2          # Truncate admin2 codes
rake geonames:truncate:cities          # Truncate cities informations
rake geonames:truncate:features        # Truncate features informations
rake geonames:truncate:alternate_names # Import alternate names

Environment variables

• IMPORT_STYLE=traditional will enforce the traditional import; resulting in many creates
• IMPORT_STYLE=quick will enforce the traditional 'quick' import; still resulting in many creates; but not checking for existence
• ALTERNATE_NAMES_LANG=<langcode> will enforce alternate names to be selected for the given language
• COUNTRY=<countrycode> will download all features and alternate names for a given country

For example, to have a high resolution import on a single country, but global names for the rest of the world, use:

COUNTRY=nl ALTERNATE_NAMES_LANG=nl rails geonames:import:all

Geonames data usage

The above commands will import geonames data in your Rails application, in other words, this will create models and fill database with place/city/country informations.

A convenient way to search for data is to use Geonames search accessor Geonames.search. This method interate on data types to find a result. Search order is the following :

1. Cities
2. Alternate names (localised names)
3. First level admin subdivisions
4. Second level admin subdivisions
5. (other) Features (lakes, mountains and others various features)

Now to find a city for example :

Geonames.search('paris')
Geonames.search('東京') # tokyo :-)

If your request is ambiguous, like not searching Dublin in Ireland but Dublin in the USA, you may specify country :

Geonames.search('dublin').first.country_code
=> 'IE'
Geonames.search('dublin, us').first.country_code
=> 'US'

If needed, requested type may be specified too :

Geonames.search('dublin', type: :city)
Geonames.search('dublin, us', type: :city)
Geonames.search('paris', type: :feature)

As Geonames.search is returning Feature objects by default, type should specified to search for Countries :

Geonames.search('Ireland', type: :country)

The following types are available :

• :admin1, for first level of adminstrative subdivision
• :admin2, for second level of adminstrative subdivision
• :city, for city names
• :feature, for generic names including all the above
• :auto, to find any type of feature (even with non-latin characters) matching the query
• :alternate_name, for names in non-latin alphabets (may be useless)
• :country, for country names

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request