Create a distance matrix in Python with the Google Maps API

Use the google maps API to obtain distances and duration between locations

Figure 1: Example of a distance matrix (in km)

What you will learn in this article

• How to calculate the actual duration and distance according to google maps

• How to export your results in a clean excel

• How to iterate over each possible combination

example output

Step 0: Environment preparation

Install the googlemaps package & import pandas & itertools.

Step 1: Load the data

For learning purposes, I have created a dummy dataset. You can download the dataset here.

You can also directly load the dataset if you are using google collab. More info in this article.

Read in the dataset with the longitude & latitude coordinates (X-coordinate = Latitude, Y-coordinate = Longitude).

Input dataset

Step 2: Connect to the Google API services

Connect to your local Google account by using your personal API key.
Make sure that you have enabled the distance matrix API.

Step 3: Initialize export lists

We are going to write out our API calls results to separate lists for each variable:

• Origin ID: This is the ID of the origin location. We can link this back to our locations.

• Destination ID: This is the ID of the destination location. We can link this back to our location.

• Distance: We will store the estimated distance here.

• Time: We will store the estimated duration here.

Step 4: Loop over the locations

This function enables us to take a location and loop over all the possible destination locations, fetching the estimated duration and distance

Step 5: Consolidate the lists in a dataframe

In this step, we will consolidate the lists in one dataframe.

Step 6: Merge the consolidated dataframe with the input file

Merge the results file with the original excel file to gain the names & coordinates of the original locations.

Happy programming!

Cheers,

Ewoud