Geocoding School Names

[ajbarba01]

Sprint

Issue #49 : Geocoding School Names

Who worked on this sprint?

Zander, Steven, and Hansini

Features Implemented

1. Check if the school exists in the database
2. If it exists, check if lat/long is already stored
3. If missing, search a CSV file for coordinates
4. Persist coordinates back to the database

New files created

src/lib/geocoding.ts

Existing files modified

src/lib/schema.ts

Acceptance Criteria

1. Upon upload, non-pre-existing schools are assigned an address from the MA schools dataset
2. Schools with similar names in different towns are tested and can be distinguished
3. All school names in the CSV match their counterparts in the spreadsheets from Paula.
4. Tell Dan & Shayne the order of you longitude and latitude pairings: [lat, long] or [long, lat]
5. Code runs locally without errors and builds successfully
6. Merge via PR

Testing: how did you test?

We tested by creating a new branch in neon and modifying the existing schools table so that we can upload test data to see if it works as intended. There are some scenarios in which it did not work, and in those scenarios it prints out the error so it can be manually fixed.

Features Not Implemented/Incomplete

As of right now, the .env for the branch is using the neon db branch, not the main one. We also didn't get to test as much as we wanted to, so we apologize if there are edge cases that fail. Just let us know and we can go back and fix those.

Screenshots:

N/A -- Backend

Tag Dan and Shayne

@danglorioso @shaynesidman

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
mhd	Ready	Preview, Comment	Feb 4, 2026 11:31pm

[tika]

what happens if the school isn't found in the csv file?
bad - you committed our api key in .env.example (i fixed this for you)
@shaynesidman this looks like a really nice place to write some unit tests. intro to js unit testing?
i'm a little scared that every time a school doesn't have long lat in the db we must look in the file. this feels like redundant processing if we know it doesn't exist in the csv file. is there a way we can not ALWAYS open the file and look?