Nearest Roads

The Roads API takes up to 100 independent coordinates, and returns the closest road segment for each point. The points passed do not 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 via HTTPS, and takes the following form:

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

Required parameters

  • points

    The path to be snapped. The path parameter accepts a list of latitude/longitude pairs. Latitude and longitude values should be separated by commas. Coordinates should be separated by the pipe character: "|". For example: path=60.170880,24.942795|60.170879,24.942796|60.170877,24.942796.

    Note: The snapping algorithm works best for points that are not too far apart. If you observe odd snapping behavior, try creating paths that have points closer together. To ensure the best snap-to-road quality, you should aim to provide paths on which consecutive pairs of points are within 300m of each other. This will also help in handling any isolated, long jumps between consecutive points caused by GPS signal loss, or noise.

Generated from the OpenAPI specification. Edit Report bug

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'

JavaScript

var axios = require('axios');

var config = {
  method: 'get',
  url: 'https://roads.googleapis.com/v1/nearestRoads?points=60.170880%2C24.942795%7C60.170879%2C24.942796%7C60.170877%2C24.942796&key=YOUR_API_KEY',
  headers: { }
};

axios(config)
.then(function (response) {
  console.log(JSON.stringify(response.data));
})
.catch(function (error) {
  console.log(error);
});

Python

import requests

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

payload={}
headers = {}

response = requests.request("GET", url, headers=headers, data=payload)

print(response.text)

Java

OkHttpClient client = new OkHttpClient().newBuilder()
  .build();
MediaType mediaType = MediaType.parse("text/plain");
RequestBody body = RequestBody.create(mediaType, "");
Request request = new Request.Builder()
  .url("https://roads.googleapis.com/v1/nearestRoads?points=60.170880%2C24.942795%7C60.170879%2C24.942796%7C60.170877%2C24.942796&key=YOUR_API_KEY")
  .method("GET", body)
  .build();
Response response = client.newCall(request).execute();

Ruby

require "uri"
require "net/http"

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

https = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port)
https.use_ssl = true

request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url)

response = https.request(request)
puts response.read_body

Go

package main

import (
  "fmt"
  "net/http"
  "io/ioutil"
)

func main() {

  url := "https://roads.googleapis.com/v1/nearestRoads?points=60.170880,24.942795%7C60.170879,24.942796%7C60.170877,24.942796&key=YOUR_API_KEY"
  method := "GET"

  client := &http.Client {
  }
  req, err := http.NewRequest(method, url, nil)

  if err != nil {
    fmt.Println(err)
    return
  }
  res, err := client.Do(req)
  if err != nil {
    fmt.Println(err)
    return
  }
  defer res.Body.Close()

  body, err := ioutil.ReadAll(res.Body)
  if err != nil {
    fmt.Println(err)
    return
  }
  fmt.Println(string(body))
}

Postman

The OpenAPI specification is also available as a Postman collection.

Run in Postman

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

FieldRequiredTypeDescription
optional Array<SnappedPoint>

An array of snapped points.

See SnappedPoint for more information.

Generated from the OpenAPI specification. Edit Report bug

SnappedPoint

FieldRequiredTypeDescription
requiredLatitudeLongitudeLiteral See LatitudeLongitudeLiteral for more information.
requiredstring

A unique identifier for a place. All place IDs returned by the Roads API correspond to road segments.

optionalnumber

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, 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.

Generated from the OpenAPI specification. Edit Report bug

LatitudeLongitudeLiteral

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

FieldRequiredTypeDescription
requirednumber

Latitude in decimal degrees

requirednumber

Longitude in decimal degrees

Generated from the OpenAPI specification. Edit Report bug