Set up a Geonames::WebService.find_nearby_postal_codes to query for latitude/longitude, e.g.

postal_code_sc = Geonames::PostalCodeSearchCriteria.new postal_code_sc.latitude = '47' postal_code_sc.longitude = '9' p Geonames::WebService.find_nearby_postal_codes(postal_code_sc)

This should result in the results as seen on: http://ws.geonames.org/findNearbyPostalCodes?lat=47&lng=9

This is running on geonames 0.2.2

It is caused by the lack of an '=' sign in the to_query_params_string method in the Geonames::PostalCodeSearchCriteria class.

My suggested fix is to use:

        if !@latitude.nil?
            url = url + "&lat=" + CGI::escape( @latitude.to_s )
        end

        if !@longitude.nil?
            url = url + "&lng=" + CGI::escape( @longitude.to_s )
        end

Note the use of ".to_s" which will enable queries on fixnum latitude/longitude as well as strings.

I have applied your suggestion to my branch on GitHub:

http://github.com/elecnix/ruby-geonames/commit/99cb830a3455e1eb39625c626d06b2598cfd19bc