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Geokit gets some love!

• Gem released: Geokit is now separated into a Gem (geokit-gem) and a Rails plugin (geokit-rails). You can use the gem separately. The plugin requires the gem.
• Rails 2.2.2 compatible: the plugin is all updated for Rails 2.2.2
• Many bug fixes/updates:
  • Improved Geocoder.us support -- respects authentication, and can geocode city names or zipcodes alone
  • cross-meridian finds work correctly with bounds conditions
  • fixed a problem with columns with "distance" in their name
  • added Geonames geocoder
  • the gem and plugin are now hosted at Github. The overall site is still athttp://geokit.rubyforge.org

Geokit makes it easy to build location-based apps. It provides geocoding, location finders, and distance calculation in an easy-to-use API.

Sinatra is really fun to work with. It's small and fast. It doesn't make many assumptions. If something goes wrong, it's pretty easy to go into the source and figure out what is going on.

There were a couple projects I wanted to take for a spin: Sinatra, Datamapper, HAML, and SASS. I decided to roll them all up into one proof-of-concept project. I don't go into a lot of depth on each, just enough to know that I can get it all up and running.

Also, since I'm running Passenger on some production boxes now, I wanted to deploy my Sinatra/Datamapper app through Passenger's Rack support.

Continue reading "Building a simple Sinatra/ DataMapper/ HAML/ SASS + Passenger app" »