Automagically detect User's Geo-Location and Autofill the Address Fields ( GeoMereLaal )

[Abhishek Parolkar]

Hi All,
     There was recent buzz about the W3C GEO API and good news is that Firefox + Safari + Opera + Chrome has started to support the spec. This greatly simplify the effort of building true Location Based Applications, where location of the user is not just determined by the geo IP but from combination of Wifi Access point and other location service provider, And not to forget that web app developers will no longer have to rely on dirty techniques or third-party plugin provider for tracing users location.

   While the API is straight-forward and is responsible for retrieving user's geo Lat-Lng , It isnt enough for quickly building Rails apps  to make sensible application. I just released a plugin which makes it super easy to build geo-location aware apps. I named it GeoMereLaal (जियो मेरे लाल : ji-oo-me-re-laal : "Keep it up baby!") , It makes use of W3C API + Google's reverse geocoding to precisely Auto-fill user's address details in existing forms. So with zero effort, you can turn your existing forms into Geo-Location aware forms.

Features:
- Takes care of browser + feature detection and Auto downgrades itself if W3C Geo API is not supported.
- Hides all callbacks and error handling automatically, i.e it does not force you to set any callback manually (as in actual w3c API).
- Exposes clean form helper interfaces ( they can take all options which apply to text_field helper ).
- Easy to install and configure.

Go grab it here http://github.com/parolkar/geo_mere_laal and let me know your feedback.

Regards,
Abhishek Parolkar
https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/parolkar

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PS: If you are looking for exciting engineering problems to solve and work with multicultural teams to sharpen your Rails skills, Whol.ly is hiring again. Check out http://gist.github.com/102581  and if you miss it, than you will really really miss it! :-).

[Satish N Kota]

Too good… GeoMereLal….. you hit the punch  word abhishek…J

 

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[Abhishek Parolkar]

Thanks Satish :-)


I am wondering if there are any takers of this plugin in BangaloreRUG?  and whether it makes sense to port it for sinatra / ramaze or cut it out as a gem.

Feedback is appreciated :-)

[Satish Kota]

 Hi Abhishek...

 

I might be doing an first cut analysis on the plugin.. I might require it for one of my projects

 

Thanks and  Regards

Satish N Kota

2009/10/26 Abhishek Parolkar <abhishek...@gmail.com>