Place name searches in the geocoder.

[NicoledeGreef]

@mraross created an application ticket: MAP-971

"Currently, to enter a named place like Vanterm as a start or endpoint, you have to type in the first few characters of the name followed by the front-gate delimiter ("--") as in:

Vanterm--

The geocoder will then return a list of the top N best named place matches

Without the front-gate delimiter, the geocoder looks for matches in its list of civic addresses instead.

He proposes a change request in the calls that the map is making in order to handle this scenario.

[NicoledeGreef]

Suggests the following change to the behavior of the route waypoint text box:

1. If a front-gate delimiter is present anywhere in the text, make a single request to the geocoder and present the results to the user for selection.

2. If there is no front-gate delimiter present, make two requests to the geocoder as follows:
   a. One request using the text as entered by the user
   b. One request with a front-gate delimiter added to the end of the text as entered by the user

Present the results of both requests to the user for selection

Why does the geocoder need a front-gate delimiter?
In short, to reduce the possibility of meaningless matches. For example, If there is a Kootenay Warehouse in Vancouver and you start typing in Kootenay, you will get a bunch of matches to Kootenay Ave, Kootenay, BC, etc. When you enter the front-gate delimiter, you are telling the geocoder what you typed in is the start of a named place, not a partial civic address. Another use of the front-gate is when you want to find a commonly named place in a given area (e.g., Starbucks in Vernon). By being able to type Starbucks--Vernon, you can limit the search to Vernon.

[NicoledeGreef]

@qqnluaq - can you please estimate for this proposed item?

[qqnluaq]

currently SMK uses the /addresses endpoint with the geocoder. Is this the right endpoint for this kind of search?

If SMK makes 2 requests to the geocoder, would the results have to be merged together (ie duplicates removed, and results somehow sorted in ranking order)?

Would the limit of max 5 results still apply?

[NicoledeGreef]

@mraross - what's your suggestion?

[mraross]

currently SMK uses the /addresses endpoint with the geocoder. Is this the right endpoint for this kind of search? Yes. The second request would have the front gate delimiter ("--") tacked on to the addressString if the user didn't enter one already

If SMK makes 2 requests to the geocoder, would the results have to be merged together (ie duplicates removed, and results somehow sorted in ranking order)? Merged yes; sorted maybe (you might try just putting named sites after civic addresses); duplicates removed no because the second search for named sites would only be looking for addresses with site names. For example, if the user typed in "Delta", a search for "Delta--" would not return Delta, BC, only Delta Port Entrance and Delta Port Exit.

Remember to honour the case where the user has included a front gate delimiter in their input address.

Would the limit of max 5 results still apply? No. Increase to at least 8 to allow for up to three site name matches. Feel free to tune to taste.

[qqnluaq]

@mraross so for the /addresses endpoin i would expect that I can give a search parameter of 'vanterm--' to get a result, but I only get one (all of BC, which is ignored):

 curl 'https://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/geocoder/addresses.geojsonp?callback=jQuery33106523753314349983_1583432051286&ver=1.2&maxResults=20&outputSRS=4326&addressString=Vanterm--&autoComplete=true&locationDescriptor=accessPoint&_=1583432051299' -H 'Accept: */*' -v
*   Trying 142.34.241.96...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to apps.gov.bc.ca (142.34.241.96) port 443 (#0)
* ALPN, offering h2
* ALPN, offering http/1.1
* Cipher selection: ALL:!EXPORT:!EXPORT40:!EXPORT56:!aNULL:!LOW:!RC4:@STRENGTH
* successfully set certificate verify locations:
*   CAfile: /etc/ssl/cert.pem
  CApath: none
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server hello (2):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Certificate (11):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server key exchange (12):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Server finished (14):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client key exchange (16):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS change cipher, Client hello (1):
* TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS change cipher, Client hello (1):
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
* SSL connection using TLSv1.2 / ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
* ALPN, server did not agree to a protocol
* Server certificate:
*  subject: C=CA; ST=British Columbia; L=Victoria; O=Government of the Province of British Columbia; CN=*.apps.gov.bc.ca
*  start date: Sep 10 15:46:36 2019 GMT
*  expire date: Oct  8 16:16:34 2020 GMT
*  subjectAltName: host "apps.gov.bc.ca" matched cert's "apps.gov.bc.ca"
*  issuer: C=US; O=Entrust, Inc.; OU=See www.entrust.net/legal-terms; OU=(c) 2012 Entrust, Inc. - for authorized use only; CN=Entrust Certification Authority - L1K
*  SSL certificate verify ok.
> GET /pub/geocoder/addresses.geojsonp?callback=jQuery33106523753314349983_1583432051286&ver=1.2&maxResults=20&outputSRS=4326&addressString=Vanterm--&autoComplete=true&locationDescriptor=accessPoint&_=1583432051299 HTTP/1.1
> Host: apps.gov.bc.ca
> User-Agent: curl/7.54.0
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2020 19:24:29 GMT
< Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
< Content-Type: application/javascript;charset=UTF-8
< X-RateLimit-Limit-hour: 60000
< X-RateLimit-Remaining-hour: 59985
< X-RateLimit-Limit-minute: 1000
< X-RateLimit-Remaining-minute: 998
< X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
< X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
< Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate
< Pragma: no-cache
< Expires: 0
< X-Frame-Options: DENY
< Content-Security-Policy: script-src 'self' https://code.jquery.com https://unipear.api.gov.bc.ca 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval'
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
<
* Connection #0 to host apps.gov.bc.ca left intact
jQuery33106523753314349983_1583432051286({"type":"FeatureCollection","queryAddress":"Vanterm--","searchTimestamp":"2020-03-05 11:24:29","executionTime":0.139,"version":"3.4.2","baseDataDate":"2019-05-10","crs":{"type":"EPSG","properties":{"code":4326}},"interpolation":"adaptive","echo":"true","locationDescriptor":"accessPoint","setBack":0,"minScore":0,"maxResults":20,"disclaimer":"http:\/\/www2.gov.bc.ca\/gov\/admin\/disclaimer.page","privacyStatement":"http:\/\/www2.gov.bc.ca\/gov\/admin\/privacy.page","copyrightNotice":"Copyright \u00A9 2018, Province of British Columbia - Open Government License","copyrightLicense":"http:\/\/www2.gov.bc.ca\/gov\/content\/governments\/about-the-bc-government\/databc\/open-data\/open-government-license-bc","features":[{"type":"Feature","geometry":{"type":"Point","crs":{"type":"EPSG","properties":{"code":4326}},"coordinates":[-122.7452849,53.913051]},"properties":{"fullAddress":"BC","score":1,"matchPrecision":"PROVINCE","precisionPoints":1,"faults":[],"siteName":"","unitDesignator":"","unitNumber":"","unitNumberSuffix":"","civicNumber":"","civicNumberSuffix":"","streetName":"","streetType":"","isStreetTypePrefix":"","streetDirection":"","isStreetDirectionPrefix":"","streetQualifier":"","localityName":"","localityType":"","electoralArea":"","provinceCode":"BC","locationPositionalAccuracy":"coarse","locationDescriptor":"provincePoint","siteID":"","blockID":"","fullSiteDescriptor":"","accessNotes":"","siteStatus":"","siteRetireDate":"","changeDate":"","isOfficial":"true"}}]});

Is this to be expected?

[mraross]

Yes because you're hitting geocoder in prod which doesn't have the named sites loaded into it. For various reasons, our dlv and tst geocoders are down. Will let you know when they come back up so you can test.

[mraross]

You might be able to use score to sort. I suspect site-name matches might score better than civic addresses. If not, we might be able to make it so through our geocoder config app.

[qqnluaq]

Estimate:
4 hrs

[mraross]

Try sorting by score; it might just work.

[NicoledeGreef]

@gk-tl - this was a late breaking suggestion from @mraross . basically allows for placename searches as well as address searches in the waypoint text boxes without any special action on the part of the end user.

can you please review and let me know if this is something you would like us to pursue ahead of March 31?

[mraross]

In other words, you won't need to enter the frontgate delimeter ("--") that we discussed this morning.

[gk-tl]

@al-tabb and I agree this is something that would be helpful to incorporate before March 31, but it also depends on level of effort/work load. The user does have the option to drop the pin//drag and drop etc, so this could equally well wait as an enhancement until after Mar 31 if need be.

[NicoledeGreef]

thank you for the notes. given the date let's bundle this post March 31 if that works.