I have just unleashed a new gem on the Ruby community: MQ-Proxy. This gem is designed to make using the MapQuest API a breeze. I had worked on the initial functionality for an e-commerce project I was working on where we needed to get geocoded information and distances but didn’t need a map. Google Maps requires a map to be present on the page when making an API call so we couldn’t use that. So we found the MapQuest API and it allowed us to do what we wanted with out anything extra.

The original version of this code was pretty specific to what we were looking for out of the MapQuest functionality so I rewrote most of it to make it more general and easier to use for the masses. One thing that was changed was the use of JSON for the calls opposed to XML.

Quick Tutorial

The source code for the project can be found here:

http://github.com/cbrady

The README does a pretty good job of explaining how the gem works and the rdoc can be generated. One thing that is missing from the README and will be added very soon is a constant called APP_KEY must be declared in your application before you make the first MapQuest call. This key can be generated by signing up at:

http://developer.mapquest.com/

Let me know what you think and if you have any questions or feedback.