Getting driving distance between two points (lat, lon) using R and Google Map API

Question

I am trying to get the driving distance between two points with lat/lon given. I can manually put them into google map and get the driving distance but I want to do all this pr

Answer 1

You need RCurl or an equivalent here.

library(XML)
library(bitops)
library(RCurl)
latlon2ft <- function(origin,destination){
  xml.url <- paste0('http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/distancematrix/xml?origins=',origin,'&destinations=',destination,'&mode=driving&sensor=false')
  xmlfile <- xmlParse(getURL(xml.url))
  dist <- xmlValue(xmlChildren(xpathApply(xmlfile,"//distance")[[1]])$value)
  distance <- as.numeric(sub(" km","",dist))
  ft <- distance*3.28084 # FROM METER TO FEET
  return(ft)
}

latlon2ft(origin='37.193489,-121.07395',destination='37.151616,-121.046586')

Result:

[1] 17224.41