CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsgoogle-mapsgoogle-maps-api-3
Boris Lau
Boris Lau

Reputation: 55

Google Maps Javascript API on Node.JS

I'm working on a NodeJS project that requires me to obtain driving directions on the server. It seems like an obvious choice to use the Google Javascript API Version 3. But it seems like it was made only to be used on HTML pages, and not on server-only scripts. Even loading the API requires a script-tag or document.write.

Then I turned to node-googlemaps which is based on the Google Maps API. Sadly, this also does not work for two reasons:

What can I do? Are there any workarounds or other APIs I could use?

Best, Boris

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3636

Answers (1)

bribeiro
bribeiro

Reputation: 727

Actually you can do it on the backend or frontend, and the approach is basically the same. All you gotta do is a request to the endpoint passing the right parameters, then the API will return you everything you need.

So, roughly it would be something like this:

var http = require('http');
var options = { 
  host: 'maps.googleapis.com',
  path: '/maps/api/directions/json?origin=Toronto&destination=Montreal&avoid=highways&mode=bicycling'
}
callback = function(response) {
   // variable that will save the result
   var result = '';

   // every time you have a new piece of the result
   response.on('data', function(chunk) {
      result += chunk;
   });

   // when you get everything back
   response.on('end', function() {
     res.send(result);
   });
}

http.request(options, callback).end();

And here's the documentation's link if you want to dig deeper on this: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/directions/?hl=nl

Cheers,

Upvotes: 1

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