Geocoder

[moonglum]

We are using Google for our Geocoding. @klaustopher says that's not legal when we do not use it in a Google Map – and we don't. We should change it to using a Open Street Map Source. He develops a gem for that, so he's the best man for the job ;)

In addition:

• It should be possible to overwrite the information as discussed in Use real position of location instead of geocoding the address #61
• The geo coding should be tested in a different way as discussed in Technical Debt #66
  • IMHO it should just be tested, if the geocoder gets called – otherwise you are testing the gem
  • It should not be compared with data coming from a different service – that has come back to bite us multiple times (server not reachable, geo coords changed a bit, ratio reached...)
• We should throw away all old geo info in order to have a clean slate

[klaustopher]

Yeah ... Bodo and I had a long discussion about that ... OSM has a serious problem in cities that have the same name as the Regierungsbezirk... Good example: If you search for Bergstrasse, Koeln, you will receive 8 results of Bergstraße within Regierungsbezirk Köln, with the street in Cologne being at position number 8 ... It's the same problem with Nominatim (official OSM service) and cloudmade ... I have filed an issue with cloudmade, but so far I haven't heard from them.

There are some intermediate solutions:

• Use Google Maps map and Google Geocoding (uncool, and not really the open source thought)
• Continue to use Google Maps geocoding and cloudmade maps and hope they will not sue us (unlikely :D)
• Use Bing geolocation and Bing maps within Leaflet until cloudmade comes along with their service

I'd suggest using one of the latter options ... I think Bing would be an OK intermediate ....

See: http://geocoding.cloudmade.com/8ee2a50541944fb9bcedded5165f09d9/geocoding/v2/find.js?query=Bergstrasse,%20Koeln,%20Germany

[moonglum]

That sucks 😭 2 or 3, I agree. 1 sucks even more.

[klaustopher]

Wir nutzen Leaflet/Cloudmade für die Karten, Google als Geocoder ... Ändern wir nach dem Rails Rumble 😄

[moonglum]

Moved to backlog.