AngelMap takes data on available missions for Angel Flight and plots those on a Google Map. It also lets you filter the results to show only nearby missions, or those departing within a given time window.

See AngelMap running at angelmap.pfactor.com and visit the project website at angelmap.rubyforge.org

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.

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 -u root create angelmap_development

Create the test database

 mysqladmin -u root 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 XML feeds

 lib/util/update_missions.rb

If you get an error complaining about /usr/bin/env try running the above scripts using this syntax (and on Windows you may need to change / to \)

 ruby script/runner lib/util/update_airports.rb
 ruby script/runner lib/util/update_missions.rb

Step 4: Go!

Run tests

 rake

Start server

 ruby script/server

Browse to localhost:3000

That should all work. If you want to run this at an address other than 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 = ’(my google maps API 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 XML feeds from Angel Flight West, Central and Southeast.
GPX Aviation Waypoint Generator - used to create the database of airports

Legal Stuff

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the file COPYING in the top-level directory for details.

README