Google Maps API Distance Between Two Points Return Different Routes

Question

In Excel, Im using VB to calculate the distance in miles between two points. When I do so, I can't seem to get the distance of multiple routes between the two points. When I call the function GetDistance("Alabama","Georgia"), it gives the distance for one route from Alabama and Georgia and clearly on Google Maps their are multiple routes from point A to B with varied distances. When I used MsgBox objHTTP.responseText to display all the routes distance, it shows only one route distance as shown here in screenshot. How can I display all the routes distance in miles?

'Calculate Google Maps distance between two addresses
Public Function GetDistance(start As String, dest As String, unit As Integer)
    Dim firstVal As String, secondVal As String, lastVal As String
    firstVal = "http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/distancematrix/json?origins="
    secondVal = "&destinations="
    lastVal = "&mode=car&language=pl&sensor=true&units=Imperical"


    Set objHTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
    URL = firstVal & Replace(start, " ", "+") & secondVal & Replace(dest, " ", "+") & lastVal
    objHTTP.Open "GET", URL, False
    objHTTP.setRequestHeader "User-Agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"
    objHTTP.send ("")
    MsgBox objHTTP.responseText

    If InStr(objHTTP.responseText, """distance"" : {") = 0 Then GoTo ErrorHandl
    Set regex = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")
    regex.Pattern = """text"".*?([0-9]+)"
    regex.Global = False
    Set matches = regex.Execute(objHTTP.responseText)


    tmpVal = Replace(matches(0).SubMatches(0), ".", Application.International(xlListSeparator))

    GetDistance = CDbl(tmpVal) / 1.609344
    Exit Function
ErrorHandl:
    GetDistance = -1
End Function

Sub PrintValue(str As String)

Range("B1") = str
End Sub

geocodezip geocodezip · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-17T19:58:09

The DistanceMatrix only provides one distance. If you need the distance of multiple routes between the same two points, use the DistanceService with the parameter alternatives=true:

From the documentation:

alternatives — If set to true, specifies that the Directions service may provide more than one route alternative in the response. Note that providing route alternatives may increase the response time from the server.

Google Maps API Distance Between Two Points Return Different Routes

1 Answers