Google Distance Matrix API for Node.js – Find distance data between locations

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7614707

by _8m3x • 12 years ago

23 7 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

konspence3• 12 years ago

This wrapper should grab more than just distance/duration.text (see https://github.com/edwlook/node-google-distance/blob/master/... - I'm assuming Google's API includes the distance as a number, and unit of measurement).

If people want to use this API to convert to a different unit, they have to parse the text which would be very clunky.

etcher3• 12 years ago

To use different units, you can specify 'imperial' (default) for miles/feet or 'metric' for kilometers/meters.

The wrapper fetches all of the data returned from Google (except for the value fields): http://cl.ly/image/3M003N0s0z3q

It actually might be a good idea to fetch the value fields as well, since that would make conversion to other metrics easier. Thanks for the suggestion.

konspence3• 12 years ago

I do think it would be valuable to fetch the value field, as then the user can format the text however they want - for example, I may want to say "96 minutes" instead of "1 hour 36 minutes".

Additionally, it's much easier to compare two values (e.g. if one wanted to compare distances between X and Y versus X and Z).

mck-• 12 years ago

The Google Distance Matrix has a limit of 10x10 locations (25x25 with business license) -- how do you get around that? I don't see any mention of API-key?

etcher3• 12 years ago

The Google Distance API does not require an API key, but this is something that should be supported for business licenses and per-key quota limit tracking.

Here are the quota limits:

Users of the free API: 100 elements per query. 100 elements per 10 seconds. 2 500 elements per 24 hour period.

Maps for Business customers: 625 elements per query. 1 000 elements per 10 seconds. 100 000 elements per 24 hour period.

Google Distance Matrix API for Node.js – Find distance data between locations

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