620 Errors while testing with Google Geocoding

If you are using Googles Geocoding Api you might experience occasional problems with 620 errors, especially while testing. The reason for this is Google prohibits too many calls in a short period. But for most testcases geocoding is not an issue so you should disable it for these.

Fortunatly in Ruby its easy to override existing methods to mock them. I use the geokit plugin and with it this could be done by the following method:

def disable_geocoding
    GeoKit::Geocoders::Geocoder.instance_eval do
    	def geocode(a)
    		res = GeoKit::GeoLoc.new
    		res.lat = 13.423007
    		res.lng = 52.534194
    		res.success = true
    		res
    	end
    end
  end

Include this in your testhelper and call disable_geocoding in your setup method.