What is "geocoder"

n. A software mechanism for geocode.

Geocoder (Ruby) is a geocoding library for Ruby. Geocoding helps to enhance webpages by presenting location relevant information to the user. When used with Rails, Geocoder adds geocoding functionality such as finding coordinates with street addresses or vice versa in addition to distance calculations for ActiveRecord objects. Since the functionality does not rely on proprietary database functions, finding different geocoded objects in an area works out-of-the-box for databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.