Oregon Geocoder as a Docker image

Linux hosting

Prerequisites

• Docker Community Edition (stable): Docker version 17.12.0-ce (2017-12-27) or later. Don't use the "Edge" version; I don't test with it.

• docker-compose: docker-compose version 1.18.0 (2017-12-18) or later, and

• PostgreSQL 10 client (psql, pgadmin4, etc.) on your host if you want to access the container from the host. Don't use pgadmin3 if you can avoid it; it's obsolete and not well-supported.

• Note: I am currently testing on an Arch Linux system.

  docker-compose version 1.18.0, build unknown
  Docker version 18.01.0-ce, build 03596f51b1
  

• Host disk space for persistence. The build process mounts two host directories as volumes inside containers.

  1. /data/gisdata is mounted in the containers as /gisdata. This is where the database population scripts save the downloaded TIGER/Line® shapefiles. Note that if you run this a few times, the Census Bureau will blacklist your IP address. So make sure you back this area up somewhere. As long as you have all the data, the scripts will run correctly even if you're blacklisted.

     /data/gisdata is also where the scripts save the pg_dump of the geocoder database. This directory will have UID and GID 999, which corresponds to the postgres user and group in the containers. Don't change this! /data/gisdatais currently about 1.6 GB. Thegeocoder.pgdump` file is about 848 MB.

  2. /data/pgdata is mounted in the containers as /var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata. This is where the containers keep their PostgreSQL data. This is also UID and GID 999. For the geocoders, this is easily recreated, either by re-running the scripts or by restoring geocoder.pgdump in /data/gisdata. But for other applications, you'll want to be careful not to corrupt it with host processes. /data/pgdata with just the Oregon geocoder database is currently about 2.7 GB.

Buidling the database and the images

1. Clone this repository.
2. Open a terminal and type cd postgis-geocoder-test/Docker.
3. Set a password for the postgres database superuser. Type export PGPASSWORD="yourpasswordgoeshere".
4. Open a command prompt in this directory and type ./make-images.bash. It will take a while to run; it is downloading shapefiles, unpacking them and inserting the contents into the database. You can ignore errors and warnings.
5. When the data acquisition is complete you'll see something like

postgis-geocoder_1  | 2018-01-20 11:10:01.039 UTC [1] LOG:  listening on IPv4 address "0.0.0.0", port 5432
postgis-geocoder_1  | 2018-01-20 11:10:01.039 UTC [1] LOG:  listening on IPv6 address "::", port 5432
postgis-geocoder_1  | 2018-01-20 11:10:01.062 UTC [1] LOG:  listening on Unix socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432"
postgis-geocoder_1  | 2018-01-20 11:10:01.103 UTC [68] LOG:  database system was shut down at 2018-01-20 11:10:00 UTC
postgis-geocoder_1  | 2018-01-20 11:10:01.118 UTC [1] LOG:  database system is ready to accept connections

When those messages appear, type CTRL-C to stop the service. The script will then shut down the service.

At this point you have

1. /data/gisdata/geocoder.pgdump - the geocoder database suitable for pg_restore,

2. Downloaded shapefiles in /data/gisdata/www2.census.gov/,

3. A PostgreSQL / PostGIS database in /data/pgdata,

4. Two Docker images: docker.io/znmeb/postgis and docker.io/znmeb/postgis-geocoder. The first one is a vanilla PostGIS image. It's built by installing the PostGIS and pgRouting packages in the official Docker PostgreSQL image from https://hub.docker.com/r/_/postgres/. Unless you need to rebuild the database you should use this one.

   The second image is the image the scripts used to download the shapefiles and populate the database. Thus it has copies of all the scripts. Both are about 467 MB.

Running the geocoder

To start the service, type docker-compose up -d. docker-compose will start the service and you'll see Creating docker_postgis_1 ... done

You'll be able to connect from the host to PostGIS in the container as postgres on host localhost port 5439 with the password you set above. Note that the port is 5439 to avoid conflicts with your host PostgreSQL service, which usually listens on port 5432.

Testing: type

export PGPASSWORD="yourpasswordgoeshere"
source env-postgis-geocoder
./test-geocoder.bash

You'll see the Hack Oregon headquarters geocoded! The second table is the geocode for the intersection of Couch Street and Grand Avenue.

Testing the geocoder - compare lon and lat with Google Maps
 r |        lon        |       lat        |              paddress               
---+-------------------+------------------+-------------------------------------
 0 | -122.662452348985 | 45.5237405800767 | 329 NE Couch St, Portland, OR 97232
(1 row)

             pprint_addy              |          st_astext           | rating 
--------------------------------------+------------------------------+--------
 101 NE Grand Ave, Portland, OR 97232 | POINT(-122.660702 45.523645) |      3
 100 NE Grand Ave, Portland, OR 97232 | POINT(-122.660702 45.523645) |      3
 98 NE Grand Ave, Portland, OR 97232  | POINT(-122.660702 45.523645) |      3
(3 rows)