Using Google Maps API to determine the driving distance between two locations

@fibo: Hi, fellow expert.  

I looked at that but the example state mileage went flooey.  Will try again later.

  I was more or less hoping someone had answered this question before and  could show me the Javascript code to ask for the route mileage and the simplexml parse to extract the total mileage.  Such a thing _might_ not exist yet.  I'll read the tut and see if anything jumps out at me.  Thanks for the suggestion.

Going to leave this open a day or two more. ~Ray

Of course add your key value to the script tag. :)

bol

@b0lsc0tt: Thanks - late here in the East.  Will try in the morning.  Appreciate your post. ~Ray

FIBO and B0LSC0TT, thanks for your suggestions - good information and helpful.  

A perfect solution would be a way to access the contents of the DIV named  "totalMiles"  programatically.  It shows on the screen in FF, but is not there in the "view source".

Is there a "document.write() or some kind of XML that could generate the totalMiles field in clear text?

Thanks, ~Ray

Ray,

Did you try my method?  It will give the total miles and gdir.getDistance().html from that code can be used to get the value and use it in your program.  That value would actually be a string that would have html.  Instead of html you can use meters (e.g. gdir.getDistance().meters ) to get a numeric value of the distance in meters.  Of course you would need to convert that but you may prefer it to removing the html.  I can help with either of these if you need.

The key is you should have what you need now, even if you need to use the value in the Javascript.  The reason you don't see the value on the page when you choose View Source is it doesn't show generated source.  Firefox has an extension called Web Developer that will show the generated source to you and you could use it to see how the script adds it to the page.  It is definitely in the source though because you see it on the page, it just isn't in the original source. :)

Let me know if you have a question.

bol

bol: Yes, I got a Google Maps key and tried it and it worked fine.  What I'm hoping to find is the way to get that mileage back in a data string of some sort --  XML is an obvious choice --  so I can parse it in a PHP script and extract the mileage.

I'm not very good with Javascript. Is there any way to get that mileage field to appear in clear text somewhere?  If not XML, I am willing to write a screen scraper script, so long as the mileage data can be found by my PHP script when I read the page.

Thanks for your help, ~Ray

It wasn't ever clear that you needed this on your PHP script.  That would change things at least a bit.  It could almost use its own question, especially if you will need a lot of details or help.  We'll see how the below works. :)

How does the PHP script need it?  Why does it need to be in PHP and on the server?  The API is made and designed as a clientside tool so it will be hard (or impossible) to completely eliminate that.  In my opinion if you really need this on the server and just in PHP then you would be better off using something like PHP's cUrl and having it go to the Google Map's page and scrape it.  The API almost is a hinderance if you aren't doing this on the client side (at least in part).

Of course it is different if you are using this as part of a form or AJAX "app."  In that case the distance could be retrieved as we have above and then put in a form or sent with other values in the XMLHTTP object to the server.  The PHP script would get it at this time and could use it.

That is why a little more info about the use of this info and what the pages are doing is needed.  Hopefully my summary of the 2 options will give you an idea of the differences and their needs but let me know if you have a question.  I can definitely provide details if needed but please keep in mind what you originally asked here and what has been provided.  I'll admit one of the zones was PHP but the question seemed to strictly be clientside and about the API. :)  No matter what I am interested and this has been fun but I don't want it to never end or become multiple questions and a project.

bol

fibo: The page never worked, but the tutorial had some value.  

b0l: I will try PHP curl and if I can't get the answer, I will post the question again and try to be clearer that I need to get an XML or CSV output containing the step-wise driving distance.  Thanks to you both for your suggestions. ~Ray

Ray,

Your welcome!  Thanks for the grade, the points and the fun question.  I'm glad I could help.

If you do open a new question, especially if it is for help using PHP, cUrl and to get the results server side then feel free to post a comment here with the new question's URL.  I would like to look at it and see if I can help, if you would be interested in my help again.

If you do ask a new question on it and don't need the xml or csv for something else then don't feel you have to go through that step for PHP to use it.  It  could be an unneeded step. :)

bol