Geocoder request.location returns nil

Question

I am using Geocoder gem to find current location. It was working fine before but now when i checked it returns nil for request.location.

request.location => nil

Answer 1

This will happen on less common searches (ip lookups, some residential addresses, etc.) when the timeout is set too low.

You can test this by running a Rails console and manually doing a search:

[7] pry(main)> location = Geocoder.search("4.2.2.2")
Geocoding API not responding fast enough (use Geocoder.configure(:timeout => ...) to set limit).
=> []

Set your timeout higher in the Geocoder initializer:

# config/initializers/geocoder.rb
Geocoder.configure(
  ...
  # geocoding service request timeout, in seconds (default 3):
  timeout: 10,
  ...
)

You might need to use 20 or 30. YMMV.

Answer 2

From geocoder gem readme,

request.location will usually return nil in test and development environments because things like localhost and 0.0.0.0 are not geocodable IP addresses.

Try ngrok to expose your local server to the internet.