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AngelMap source code available

posted Oct 06, 2007

The source code and documentation for AngelMap is now available on the new AngelMap project page hosted at RubyForge. The code is released as open source under the GNU General Public License.

The project page also provides a place to report bugs, request features, or post to forums about AngelMap.

Here’s an excerpt from the README file to help you get started quickly.

Get the Code

You can get the code using subversion by running:

svn checkout http://angelmap.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/ angelmap

Or you can download a source code package from the AngelMap files area at RubyForge

Building and Running AngelMap

Ok, you’ve got the code on your local machine. Here’s how to get it running.

Step 1: Install prerequisites

You’ll need a Ruby on Rails environment. The easiest way to get started is with one of the available one-step runtime environments that are available.

• Mac OS X: Locomotive
• Windows: InstantRails

If you’re on Linux, I don’t think there are any instant distributions available yet. The InstantRails page says that a port is planned. There are many HOWTOs available though. Here’s a few that I found — let me know if you have other suggestions.

• Ruby on Rails Wiki
• Fedora
• Red Hat
• CentOS
• Debian
• Ubuntu

Step 2: Database Setup

The code you just checked out is configured to run on MySql 5. If you’re using InstantRails then you’re all set. Locomotive uses SQLite instead of MySQL. You can either manually install MySQL and use it, or modify the AngelMap configuration to use SQLite (I haven’t tried this yet).

You can use databases other than MySQL 5 by editing the config/database.yml file. That same file is where you can configure your database username, password and hostname (if you need something other than the defaults of root, no password and localhost).

Here’s the steps to set up your database

• Edit config/database.yml if needed.
• Create the development database
  mysqladmin create angelmap_development
• Create the test database
  mysqladmin create angelmap_test
• Create the tables
  rake db:migrate

Step 3: Populate Database

Populate the database with the list of airports and missions.

• Populate the airports table. This takes a few minutes … be patient.
  lib/util/update_airports.rb
• Get fresh list of Angel Flight missions through the RSS feeds
  lib/util/update_missions.rb

Step 4: Go!

• Run tests
  rake
• Start server
  ruby script/server
• Browse to http://localhost:3000

That should all work.

If you want to run this at an address other than http://localhost:3000, then you’ll need to get a Google Maps API key (it’s easy and free). Once you’ve got your own key, edit config/environment.rb and put your Google Maps API key where it says GeoKit::Geocoders::google = 'REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_GOOGLE_KEY'.

Credits

AngelMap was made possible by several other projects.

• Ruby on Rails – a great web application framework
• Google maps API – used to plot missions on the map
• Geokit plugin – used to determine which airports are near each other
• The available Angel Flight RSS feeds from Angel Flight West, Central and Southeast.
• GPX Aviation Waypoint Generator – used to create the database of airports