README
This respository is a very quick demo to show how easy it is to get user location data in a Rails application.
By knowing the country that our visitor is accessing the app from, we can then carry out functionality based on that.
Our application makes use of the geocoder gem to achieve this.
Some examples of how we might use that information:
- Show product pricing in appropriate currency
- Use localization of website content
- Translate content to visitors language by setting appropriate locale (from /config/locales)
- Restrict users from visiting certain pages or content
- Providing discounts to coupons to lower GDP countries
- Custom banner or popup for specific countries
As you can see, there are many use cases for this information and these examples are just some starting points for consideration.
Potential pitfalls
It is worth noting that since we are using a third party service to carry out the geocoding, there may be times when we don't get the response we are expecting. Therefore it is good to add a fallback to ensure our app does not break if the geocoding does not happen due to rate limiting or other unforseen issues.