search nearby location with country name not working with geocoder

Question

I'm trying to get nearby users from a given location. I have users latitude and longitude(I'm taking out from their address).

Now when I'm searching a term like 'NC' its showing some of its results, But when I'm searching with the country name 'Unites States', it must show all the results but instead it doesn't show any result.

I'm using Geocoder gem for this. Here's what I'm doing:

controller :

@user = User.near(params[:search], 20, :order => :distance)

Model:

geocoded_by :address1 

View :

 Displaying all the results returned from @user

Any Idea what I should do so that it will return all results even if I search with a country name.

Answer 1

When Geocoder receive something like 'US', it will pick a single central coordinates pair and then search from it. So in your case, it will search for users within 20 miles from the center of US.

What you want to do, is to geocode the search and then find out which kind of input it was (country etc.)

So, for example, in your controller:

def search
  search = Geocoder.search(params[:search]).first

  if search.types.includes?('country')
    @users = User.where(country: search.address)
  else
    @users = User.near(search.coordinates, 20) # Will be ordered by distance by default
  end
end

You have to store the address components in you database.

The best way to have consistent data is to run a custom geocode callback:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  geocoded_by :address do |obj, results|
    if result = results.first
      obj.street = result.street_address
      obj.zip = result.postal_code
      obj.city = result.city
      obj.country = result.country
      obj.latitude = result.latitude
      obj.longitude = result.longitude
    end
  end

  after_validation :geocode, if: :address_changed?

  def address
    "#{street}, #{zip} #{city}, #{country}"
  end

  def address_changed?
    street_changed? || city_changed? || zip_changed? || country_changed?
  end
end