Time for a rewrite?

[midwire]

@cmckni3 I’ve been contemplating it for several months, and though I’m driving a very large re-write project for a client right now, I think it is time for a rewrite of this gem. My time is limited but I think that I can still contribute quite a bit.

Let me know your thoughts. Here are a few ideas:

• Deprecate support for Rails versions less than 4.0
• Deprecate support for Ruby versions less than 2.3.0
• Update and streamline the ETL of data (country, state, county, zipcode). I think Kiba is a nice choice for this.
• Make the generators update existing models if they already exist - and allow the user to specify matching models with different names.
• Include my_zipcode_gem.js and my_zipcode_gem.coffee modules for users to choose between
• Optionally generate an example view
• Generate the lookup controller and update the route
• i18n support
• International postal code support (I haven’t researched this and the scope may be prohibitive)

[cmckni3]

Great ideas. I believe the first 4 items you outlined are big wins for the project. The lookup controller and route are useful as well.

Deprecating support for Rails < 4.0 and Ruby < 2.3 should be an easy win. Might want to consider a branching strategy and should bump the major version. Removing the extra code will simplify the project greatly.

Definitely need to update the ETL process. The current rake task takes a little processing time to import into a database.

[cmckni3]

I may get some time in the upcoming months to implement everything except the ETL process. Haven't thought of a solution to it yet.

[midwire]

I can handle the ETL. I’ve been using Kiba a lot for my latest client and it will be a natural thing for me to do while my head is in that space. I think it makes sense to manage that in the free_zipcode_data project, and have this project formally declare that gem as a dependency.

Glad you are still interested Chris. Thanks for helping to maintain this thing for so long.

[cmckni3]

Neat. Don't have experience in the ETL space. I rarely touch databases now haha.

Glad to help out!

[rylanb]

If you end up getting some momentum on this, would love to try to be involved.

I'm tentative to commit right now as I have a large constant project I'm working on, 2 smaller things coming down the pipeline client-work-wise, plus OSS maintenance for Boulder Food Rescue.

But if you organize up a to-do board/list in a Github Project or Trello, would be happy to see if I can jump in!

[midwire]

Thanks @rylanb. I have added you as a collaborator with push access. I’ve setup a preliminary project here in GitHub. Either of you guys feel free to modify add/edit/remove tasks and pick anything you want to work on. I appreciate the help. I’ll work on this and free_zipcode_data as I have time during the week as well. 👍