New York City is kind enough to publish their Geosupport Desktop Edition shared object library and data, along with a voluminous User Programming Guide demonstrating how to use it. This toolset allows you to build a super-fast (at the moment, I can geocode 2,000 addresses per second on a docker machine running on my Mac) NYC geocoder for your application without needing outside network access.
NycGeosupport is a ruby gem that makes use of the ffi gem to wrap a more pleasant API around Geosupport Desktop Edition -- more pleasant if you find writing ruby more pleasant than C anyway ;).
NOTE: I could be mistaken, but this will not run on your non-Linux machine, because the shared object libraries contained in the Geosupport Desktop Edition are built on Linux. However, if you're running MacOS (like me) or Windows then Docker to the rescue! (Though I guess if you're running Windows there is a native version of Geosupport Desktop Edition already.)
The Rakefile in this repository has some helpful rake commands for building, testing, and running the nyc_geosupport gem inside a docker container:
rake image:build # Build Docker image
rake image:cleanup # Delete untagged Docker images (uses --force so be careful)
rake image:list # List nyc_geosupport Docker images
rake docker:console # Run console in Docker container with nyc_geosupport gem loaded
rake docker:test # Run tests in Docker container
rake image:build will download and extract geosupport desktop edition and set the ENV vars needed for geosupport. Several of those ENV vars are required for geosupport internally, but LIBGEO_PATH is used by the gem as the location of the libgeo.so file.
Use rake docker:console to run an interactive console inside your docker machine with the gem built and loaded.
Use rake docker:test to run tests on the gem inside your docker machine.
Note that docker:test and docker:console both call image:build as a first step. That step builds and installs the gem in your docker machine.
Here's an example of calling a geosupport function in the console:
> nyc = NycGeosupport.client(geo_function: "1")
=> {:geo_function=>"1", :wa1_length=>1200, :wa2_length=>300}
> nyc.run(house_number_display_format: "100", street_name1: "Broadway", b10sc1: "1")
=> true
> nyc.response
=> {:work_area_1=>{:geosupport_function_code=>"1", :house_number_display_format=>"100", :b10sc1=>"1", :street_name1=>"BROADWAY", :work_area_format_indicator=>"1", :first_borough_name=>"MANHATTAN", :house_number_display_format_output=>"100", :house_number_sort_format_output=>"000100000AA", :b10sc_first_borough_and_street_code=>"11361001010", :first_street_name_normalized=>"BROADWAY", :geosupport_return_code=>"00"},
:work_area_2=>{:internal_use=>"011136102000102000AA", :low_house_number_of_block_face=>"000092000AA", :high_house_number_of_block_face=>"000102000AA", :dcp_preferred_lgc=>"01", :num_of_cross_streets_at_low_address_end=>1, :list_of_cross_streets_at_low_address_end=>"132910", :num_of_cross_streets_at_high_address_end=>1, :list_of_cross_streets_at_high_address_end=>"128870", :borough_code=>"1", :face_code=>"0755", :sequence_number=>"01055", :side_of_street_indicator=>"R", :segment_length_in_feet=>236, :x_coordinate=>"0981097", :y_coordinate=>"0197271", :community_dev_eligibility_indicator=>"I", :dot_street_light_contractor_area=>"1", :community_district_borough_code=>"1", :community_district_number=>"01", :zip_code=>"10005", :election_district=>"092", :assembly_district=>"65", :health_center_district=>"15", :health_area=>"7700", :sanitation_district=>"101", :police_patrol_borough_command=>"1", :police_precinct=>"001", :fire_division=>"01", :fire_battalion=>"01", :fire_company_type=>"E", :fire_company_number=>"004", :community_school_district=>"02", :atomic_polygon=>"304", :police_patrol_borough=>"MS", :segment_type_code=>"U", :coincidence_segment_count=>"1", :borough_of_census_tract=>"1", :census_tract_1990=>"7", :census_tract_2010=>"7", :census_block_2010=>"1006", :census_tract_2000=>"7", :census_block_2000=>"3003", :neighborhood_tabulation_area=>"MN25", :dsny_snow_priority_code=>"P", :hurricane_evacuation_zone=>"5", :underlying_b7sc_of_true_street=>"11361001", :segment_identifier=>"0114275"}}
As you can see, you can instantiate a geosupport client with NycGeosupport.client and use the run method to query geosupport. The response can be viewed as a Hash by calling the response method.
For some other examples, check out nyc_geosupport_test.rb.
- Finish work area 2 layouts
- Error/exception handling
- More tests
- Better responses than just a Hash
- Documentation
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/jordanderson/nyc_geosupport.
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.