Since this isn't really Yahoo specific, you'll probably have much better
results posting it to the main ruby-talk mailing list.

On 11/20/06, jeffgrice95 <jmgrice@...> wrote:

> I am new to Ruby, so I am still learning to do things in a "ruby-ish"
> way. In my job I do a fair amount of mapping, and thus I have a need to
> get latitude/longitude coordinates for addresses that I have. I have
> written the program below and though I might share it in case anyone
> else needs something similar.
>
> Please feel free to offer suggestions for improvement. As I said I am
> new to Ruby! I have commented the code, so you can build it with rdoc
> and get at least a very rudimentary documentation.
>
> Code:
>
> # This program is an implementation of geocoding services offered by
> {Yahoo! Maps Web
> Services}[http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/rest/V1/geocode.html].
> #
> # * Author: Jeff Grice
> # * Date: 11.16.2006
> # ---
>
> require 'net/http'
> require 'rexml/document'
>
> # The YGeocoder class implements Yahoo! geocoding services. Given an
> address, city, state, and zip, the service returns
> # an XML response with the result set containing the latitude,
> longitude, precision, an any warnings associated with the result.
> class YGeocoder
> attr_reader :latitude, :longitude, :precision, :warning, :city, :state,
> :zip, :address
> YURL = 'http://api.local.yahoo.com/MapsService/V1/geocode'
> APPID = 'your_app_id' # use your yahoo! app id here!
> @@count = 0
>
> # Class attribute to return the total number of geocodes found.
> def YGeocoder.count
> @@count
> end
>
> # Constructor which takes strings for address, city, state, and zip
> def initialize(address, city, state, zip)
> @addressArgs = {
> 'appid' => APPID,
> 'city' => city,
> 'state' => state,
> 'street' => address,
> 'zip' => zip
> }
> @qs = buildQueryString(@addressArgs)
> @warning = ""
> geocode()
> end
>
> # Method to write results to a semi-colon delimited string for easy
> output to text file
> def to_s
>
> ";#{@address};#{@city};#{@state};#{@zip};#{@latitude};#{@longitude};#{@p\
> recision};#{@warning}"
> end
>
> # Method to return array of address, city, state, zip, latitude,
> longitude, precision, warning
> def to_a
> [@address, @city, @state, @zip, @latitude, @longitude, @precision,
> @warning]
> end
> private
> # Private Method to return query string based on hash variable
> supplied. The address information is passed to this method
> # from the class constructor
> def buildQueryString(hash)
> qs = ""
> hash.each {|key, value| qs += "&" + URI.encode(key) + "=" +
> URI.encode(value) }
> qs[0] = "?"
> return YURL + qs
> end
>
> # Private Method that does the bulk of the work of the class. Sends
> request to Yahoo geocoding service, then parses
> # the result and stores them to instance variables that are exposed as
> attributes.
> def geocode
> begin
> data = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(@qs)).body
> doc = REXML::Document.new(data)
> #only get the data if there is only 1 result
> if doc.elements.size == 1 then
> doc.elements.each('ResultSet/Result') do |result|
> result.attributes.each_attribute do |attr|
> case attr.name
> when "precision": @precision = attr.value
> when "warning": @warning = attr.value
> end
> end
> end
> #get the element text and assign to instance variables
> @latitude = getElementText(doc, 'ResultSet/Result/Latitude')
> @longitude = getElementText(doc, 'ResultSet/Result/Longitude')
> @city = getElementText(doc, 'ResultSet/Result/City')
> @state = getElementText(doc, 'ResultSet/Result/State')
> @zip = getElementText(doc, 'ResultSet/Result/Zip')
> @address = getElementText(doc, 'ResultSet/Result/Address')
> @@count += 1
> else
> @warning = "More than one location returned"
> end
> rescue
> puts "Connection Error"
> @warning = "Site cannot be geocoded"
> end
> end
>
> # Method to help extract text out of the XML elements returned from
> Yahoo web service.
> def getElementText(doc, xpath)
> s = ""
> doc.elements.each(xpath) do |ele|
> s = ele.text.strip
> end
> return s
> end
> end
>
>



--
thanks,
-pate
-------------------------
http://on-ruby.blogspot.com