[SOLVED] Calculate Driving Distance

[millercj]

I'm building a website for my client with an e-commerce component. She wants to offer free delivery if the address of the buyer is within 30 driving miles of her home. I know if I go to the URL:

 

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from+A+to+B&output=kml

 

with A being the starting address and B being the ending address it will return the data in which that information is encoded. Is there a way to do something like this within the backend so the consumer never sees anything?

[premiso]

You will probably need to use the google api, not sure, but that should allow you to pull different information.

 

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/index.html

[rhodesa]

yeah, this should be the part of the API you need:

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/reference.html#GDirections

[millercj]

i figured out that I can do it with ajax without api's:

 

$prepa = "XXXX";
$prepb = "XXXX";
$a=urlencode($prepa);
$b=urlencode($prepb);
//Create the url
$myurl = "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from+{$a}+to+{$b}&output=kml";
//Open the url
$f = fopen ($myurl, "r");
//Read the contents
$str = stream_get_contents($f);
//String match the distance
preg_match("/Distance: ([0-9.-]+)/", $str, $distance);
preg_match("/#160;([a-z]+)/", $str, $units);
//Respond

if($distance[1]!=NULL && $distance[1]<30)
{echo "Eligible for Delivery".$distance[1].$units[1];}
else{echo "Not Eligible for Delivery ".$distance[1].$units[1];}