Canada Addresses and Zip Codes

[damon.so...@gmail.com]

Hello,

First off, I would like to give props to DSTK. Very nice. I installed an instance on EC2 from the command line, and it works great.

However, I am trying to geocode Canadian zip codes and it is returning 0 results.

Example: H3W2L9, QC CA

Any ideas?

Thanks,

-damon

[Pete Warden]

Hi Damon,

               thanks for your kind words! Believe it or not Canadian postal codes are actually somewhat controversial, thanks to an attempt by the government to claim copyright on them:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6415/125/

I thought the short form (the first three letters) was supported, thanks to a recent data import I did from geonames.org, but when I just tested it, it wasn't showing any results. Happily that turned out to be an easy fix once I dug into it. You can try it for "QC H3W, Canada" with this URL:

http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/maps/api/geocode/json?address=QC%20H3W%2C%20Canada

Is that helpful? I'd love to get better resolution on postal codes.

cheers,

           Pete

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Jetpac

You should get the app for your iPad!

[damon.so...@gmail.com]

It does indeed. I have an instance running here:

http://ec2-54-234-51-170.compute-1.amazonaws.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=QC%20H3W%2C%20Canada

Mine returns different results however.

{ "status": "OK", "results": [ { "geometry": { "location_type": "APPROXIMATE", "viewport": { "northeast": { "lng": -90.0, "lat": 65.0 }, "southwest": { "lng": -100.0, "lat": 55.0 } }, "location": { "lng": -95.0, "lat": 60.0 } }, "types": [ "country", "political" ], "address_components": [ { "types": [ "country", "political" ], "short_name": "CA", "long_name": "Canada" } ] } ] }

Thoughts?

[Pete Warden]

If you pull down the latest code, it should have the fix. Here's what you'll need to do once you've ssh-ed into your instance:

cd ~/sources/dstk

git pull origin master

Let me know if that doesn't work.

cheers,

           Pete

[Pete Warden]

Oh, and one thing I forgot, to restart the Sinatra server process run

touch tmp/restart.txt

cheers,

           Pete

[damon.so...@gmail.com]

Ok, I forgot to associate a key-pair. Must recreate the instance.

I will try that and let you know.

Thanks.

[damon.so...@gmail.com]

Ok. Getting Internal Server Error now.

Not sure I did the restart thing correctly.

Do I do touch tmp/restart.txt from within ~/sources/dstk?

I see this in /var/logs/apache2/error.log

ERROR:  relation "postal_codes" does not exist

LINE 1: DECLARE myportal CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM postal_codes WHERE...

                                                  ^

SystemExit - exit:

[Pete Warden]

My mistake - I added the post code data after the last VM snapshot. You'll have to run these commands to grab the latest data and rebuild the database:

cd ~/source/dstkdata

git pull origin master

cd ~/source/dstk

./populate_database.rb

It will take about an hour to run, unfortunately!

[damon.so...@gmail.com]

No worries. I appreciate all of the help.

Does the tmp/restart.txt go inside of ~/sources/dstk or is it /tmp/restart.txt?

[Pete Warden]

That's inside sources/dstk, ie the full path is /home/ubuntu/sources/dstk/tmp/restart.txt

[Damon Sorrentino]

Hi Pete,

Been using the DSTK for awhile now. Works great. I have the latest version installed and am getting a 500 on a particular Canadian postal code. It works on the dstk web site, but not mine. I am guessing the postal code is not in the database, however when I run populate_database.rb I am getting the folllowing error:

NOTICE:  CREATE TABLE / PRIMARY KEY will create implicit index "cities_pkey" for table "cities"

./populate_database.rb:31:in `foreach': No such file or directory - ../dstkdata/worldcitiespop.csv (Errno::ENOENT)

from ./populate_database.rb:31:in `load_cities'

from ./populate_database.rb:420

Here is the URL I am calling for information:

Works:

http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/maps/api/geocode/json?address=T7V+AB+canada&sensor=false

Does not work:

http://ec2-54-147-144-200.compute-1.amazonaws.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=T7V+AB+canada&sensor=false

Can you shed some light?

Thanks,

-damon

[Damon Sorrentino]

Never mind, I restarted the server and all works.

[Sam Winters]

Hi Pete/Damon,

I am having the same issue generally--getting 500 errors on my own instance but not getting them on the main DSTK website. I am trying to steps as specified above but am also getting the "No such file or directory" error when trying to run ./populate_database.rb . How did you resolve this?

Thanks!

Sam

[Damon Sorrentino]

Hi Sam,

I restarted the server and everything worked great.

See earlier in the thread on how to restart the server. 

-damon