Using Google API

The following is the function I used to make my blog post on the distance to the nearest pub. This function was used to get the walking distance and time from a point I specified, to the nearest pub.

Getting an API key

You don’t always need an API key, as google will often allow requests based on your IP, but getting a key often means you are allowed to make more calls. Plus my current IP at Cambridge University seems to be responsible for a lot of keyless API requests, so it’s often maxed out.

The Google API console is here. Simply set up a project, then create a browser key. You can limit requests to your own IP address to prevent someone else using it (say if you accidentally share the key), or leave that field blank and let anyone with the key use it.

The available APIs at google

There are heaps of APIs out there, but I’m focusing on Google’s as they are really well documented. The list of APIs available from Google is here. The one I want is the Google Distance Matrix API1, which is part of the maps API.

The function

Function to take the latitude and longitude of two points, actually make the call, and spit out an object with the distance and time. The function has four inputs.

origin and destination is the latitude and longitude in the format "latitude,longitude". It can also take text like "Jesus College, Cambridge, UK".

mode is what mode of travel you want. The options are "driving", "walking" and "bicycling".

key is your API key.

latlon2ft <- function(origin,destination,mode,key){
    xml.url <- paste0(
    xmlfile <- xmlParse(getURL(xml.url))
    time <- xmlValue(xmlChildren(xpathApply(xmlfile,"//duration")[[1]])$value)
    time <- round(as.numeric(time)/60,1)
    dist <- xmlValue(xmlChildren(xpathApply(xmlfile,"//distance")[[1]])$value)
    distance <- as.numeric(sub(" km","",dist))
    output <- list(time,distance)
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