API Exercise: Seven Wonders of the World

You are planning a trip to see all seven wonders of the world! How exciting! And now you need to plan your trip, using the coordinates of all seven wonders. Being a developer, why do this yourself when you can have a computer do it for you?!

Objective

Using the list of all the wonders, make a collection of all their coordinates using httparty and Location IQ's API.

Use this:

seven_wonders = ["Great Pyramid of Giza", "Gardens of Babylon", "Colossus of Rhodes", "Pharos of Alexandria", "Statue of Zeus at Olympia", "Temple of Artemis", "Mausoleum at Halicarnassus"]

To Generate this:

[{"Great Pyramid of Giza"=>{:lat=>"29.9791264", :lon=>"31.1342383751015"}}, {"Gardens of Babylon"=>{:lat=>"50.8241215", :lon=>"-0.1506162"}}, {"Colossus of Rhodes"=>{:lat=>"36.3397076", :lon=>"28.2003164"}}, {"Pharos of Alexandria"=>{:lat=>"30.94795585", :lon=>"29.5235626430011"}}, {"Statue of Zeus at Olympia"=>{:lat=>"37.6379088", :lon=>"21.6300063"}}, {"Temple of Artemis"=>{:lat=>"32.2818952", :lon=>"35.8908989553238"}}, {"Mausoleum at Halicarnassus"=>{:lat=>"37.03788265", :lon=>"27.4241455276707"}}]

Requirements

Understand the Scaffold

Open up seven_wonders.rb in this repo. What do you see? Answer the following questions with a neighbor.

1. What are the constant variables in this file? What are their values?
2. What are the two methods defined?
3. What is the find_seven_wonders method returning?
4. Look this up:
   • What is API rate limiting?
   • What does Ruby's built-in method sleep do?
5. Inside of the find_seven_wonders method, what happens inside of the each loop?

Sign up for Location IQ

To get access to Location IQ's API, we need to sign up for a Location IQ key.

Go to their website and create a free account.

Then, find your user dashboard, and look for Geocoding. You'll find a token somewhere. Use this token as your Location IQ API Key.

Implement get_location

get_location is a method that takes in one search_term query and returns a hash in the form of { original location name => { :lat => "99.99", :lon => "99.99"}}

For example, if the passed in search_term is "Great Pyramid of Giza", then the output should be

{
  "Great Pyramid of Giza"=> {
    :lat=>"29.9791264",
    :lon=>"31.1342383751015"
  }
}

Implement this method so it makes a call to Location IQ using HTTParty.

Things to consider:

• What is the base URL for this call? You will need to look at the Location IQ Geocoding documentation to find the answer.
• What is the HTTParty syntax to set the query parameters for this call? What needs to be part of the query parameters?
• What does the response that comes back from the Location IQ API look like? How do we check or verify? What debugging tools can we use?
  • Hint: After discovering what the response from Location IQ looks like, if you see "multiple" coordinates, pick the "first" one.

Optional Enhancement

For an optional enhancement try to:

• Make a request for driving directions from Cairo Egypt to the Great Pyramid of Giza.
• Turn these locations into the names of places: [{ lat: 38.8976998, lon: -77.0365534886228}, {lat: 48.4283182, lon: -123.3649533 }, { lat: 41.8902614, lon: 12.493087103595503}]

Safe travels!