Nearest Roads

AI-generated Key Takeaways

• The Roads API identifies the nearest road segment for up to 100 independent latitude/longitude coordinates.

• Requests are made via HTTPS using a specified URL structure including your API key and the desired coordinates.

• Responses provide a list of snapped points, each containing the location on the road, a unique place ID, and potentially the original request index.

• Each snapped point represents the closest road segment to the corresponding input coordinate, offering valuable road network data.

• Use Snap to Roads API when working with sequential GPS points, as this API focuses on individual, independent coordinates.

The Roads API takes up to 100 independent coordinates, and returns the closest road segment for each point. The points passed don't need to be part of a continuous path.

If you are working with sequential GPS points, use Snap to Roads.

Requests

A request to nearest roads must be sent using HTTPS, and takes the following form:

https://roads.googleapis.com/v1/nearestRoads?parameters&key=YOUR_API_KEY

Required parameters

• points

  The points to be snapped. The points parameter accepts a list of latitude/longitude pairs. Separate latitude and longitude values with commas. Separate coordinates with the pipe character: "|". For example: points=60.170880,24.942795|60.170879,24.942796|60.170877,24.942796.

Examples

The following request returns a set of road segments based on the specified list of coordinates.

URL

https://roads.googleapis.com/v1/nearestRoads
  ?points=60.170880%2C24.942795%7C60.170879%2C24.942796%7C60.170877%2C24.942796
  &key=YOUR_API_KEY

cURL

curl -L -X GET 'https://roads.googleapis.com/v1/nearestRoads?points=60.170880%2C24.942795%7C60.170879%2C24.942796%7C60.170877%2C24.942796&key=YOUR_API_KEY'

Responses

For each valid request, the Roads API will return a response in the format indicated within the request URL.

{
  "snappedPoints":
    [
      {
        "location":
          { "latitude": 60.170878428876755, "longitude": 24.94269540970182 },
        "originalIndex": 0,
        "placeId": "ChIJfVFHrM0LkkYRBzUQos_jR5w",
      },
      {
        "location":
          { "latitude": 60.17087741412199, "longitude": 24.942695474405202 },
        "originalIndex": 1,
        "placeId": "ChIJfVFHrM0LkkYRBzUQos_jR5w",
      },
      {
        "location":
          { "latitude": 60.170875416131736, "longitude": 24.942695601802203 },
        "originalIndex": 2,
        "placeId": "ChIJfVFHrM0LkkYRBzUQos_jR5w",
      },
    ],
}

The response uses the following schema.

NearestRoadsResponse

Field	Required	Type	Description
snappedPoints	optional	Array<SnappedPoint>	An array of snapped points. Sometimes containing several snapped points for the same point with differing placeId or location. See SnappedPoint for more information.

SnappedPoint

Field	Required	Type	Description
location	required	LatitudeLongitudeLiteral	See LatitudeLongitudeLiteral for more information.
placeId	required	string	A unique identifier for a place. All place IDs returned by the Roads API correspond to road segments.
originalIndex	optional	number	An integer that indicates the corresponding value in the original request. Each value in the request should map to a snapped value in the response. However, if you've set interpolate=true or if you're using nearest roads, then it's possible that the response will contain more coordinates than the request. Interpolated values will not have an originalIndex. These values are indexed from 0, so a point with an originalIndex of 4 will be the snapped value of the 5th latitude/longitude passed to the path parameter. Nearest Roads points may contain several points for single coordinates with differing location or placeId.

LatitudeLongitudeLiteral

An object describing a specific location with Latitude and Longitude in decimal degrees.

Field	Required	Type	Description
latitude	required	number	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	required	number	Longitude in decimal degrees