Is the Rails Geokit: Multigeocoder geocoding service down

Question

Has anyone that works with the Rails Geokit::Geocoder been able to geocode with it over the last few weeks?

I can no longer get an address to geocode regardless of its format or if the string itself can be entered directly into google maps and returns a single result.

Neither

Address1, address2, city, postcode

nor

London, UK

formats will return anything other than "Google was unable to geocode address:...".

has the service been stopped or perhaps other users are consuming the daily geocoding limit as soon as it reset?

Ruby 1.8.7

Rails 2.3.15

Geokit 1.6.5

Edit:

After further investigation I've determined that the comment on geocoding limits is not the case, my api key didn't resolve the issue.

--- Used solution ---

This is the alternative I used (before an answer was posted).

def self.geocodeAddress address
    address.gsub!(/,/, ",+").gsub!(/\s/, "")
    res = MultiJson.load open("http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=#{address}&sensor=false").read()
    res["results"].first["geometry"]["location"] if res["status"] == "OK"
end

Can't remember why the /\s/ replacement was made, I've left it in for transparency..

Answer 1

Geokit previously used Google Maps API v2. That API has been depricated. To make Geokit use the new version with rails, update your geokit_config.rb file:

Geokit::Geocoders::provider_order = [:google3, :us]
Geokit::Geocoders::Google3Geocoder = Geokit::Geocoders::GoogleGeocoder3

See this issue for reference: https://github.com/geokit/geokit/issues/86