Using the Google_distance function in Googleway

Question

I am having trouble understanding the outputs when using this google_distance function. When using mydist() in ggmap I would get the number of miles, minutes, hours that it would take to get to point A to point B.

Now my output looks like this when I use google_distance. Can anyone help explain what each of the numbers is referring to?

$rows
                                                            elements
1 791 km, 790588, 7 hours 28 mins, 26859, 7 hours 35 mins, 27286, OK

My code is as follows:

results <- google_distance(origins = list(c(26.19660, -98.23591)),
                          destinations = list(c(31.62327, -94.64276)), 
                          mode = "driving", key = key, simplify = TRUE)

Answer 1

What you're seeing is the standard JSON response , but simplified into a data.frame (as per the simplify = TRUE argument)

If you look one level deeper at your response, you'll get the description of those valeus

results$rows$elements
# [[1]]
#   distance.text distance.value   duration.text duration.value duration_in_traffic.text duration_in_traffic.value
# 1        791 km         790588 7 hours 28 mins          26859          7 hours 28 mins                     26906

where

• distance.value is in metres
• duration.value is in seconds

Similarly, looking at the structure of the result object, you'll see all the JSON elements

str(results)
# List of 4
# $ destination_addresses: chr "805 E College St, Nacogdoches, TX, USA"
# $ origin_addresses     : chr "1400-1498 W Houston Ave, McAllen, TX 78501, USA"
# $ rows                 :'data.frame': 1 obs. of  1 variable:
#   ..$ elements:List of 1
# .. ..$ :'data.frame': 1 obs. of  4 variables:
#   .. .. ..$ distance           :'data.frame': 1 obs. of  2 variables:
#   .. .. .. ..$ text : chr "791 km"
# .. .. .. ..$ value: int 790588
# .. .. ..$ duration           :'data.frame':   1 obs. of  2 variables:
#   .. .. .. ..$ text : chr "7 hours 28 mins"
# .. .. .. ..$ value: int 26859
# .. .. ..$ duration_in_traffic:'data.frame':   1 obs. of  2 variables:
#   .. .. .. ..$ text : chr "7 hours 28 mins"
# .. .. .. ..$ value: int 26906
# .. .. ..$ status             : chr "OK"
# $ status               : chr "OK"

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Further Reference:

Google Developers Guide: Distance Matrix