A common operation in Maps API applications is to search a spatial database for locations within a certain distance of a point. It can also be useful to offer search along a route, for example to find hotels, restaurants, or service stations on a long journey. However if your spatial database does not support corridor queries this can be difficult to implement efficiently. For example searching around every vertex of a route will generate a large number of queries which overlap, while also leaving gaps in coverage between widely spaced vertices.




RouteBoxer is a new addition to the Open Source Utility Libraries for the JavaScript Maps API v2 and v3 that can help. It enables search along a route to be quickly and easily implemented against any spatial database that supports bounding box queries, such as the Google Maps Data API. The RouteBoxer class takes a Polyline object or array of LatLng objects and returns a set of non-overlapping bounding boxes that are guaranteed to encompass every point within a specified distance of the line.




You can use the below demo to evaluate the boxes that are generated for a given route.






For information on how to use RouteBoxer in your applications, see the RouteBoxer documentation for Maps API v2, and Maps API v3.




Posted by Thor Mitchell, Maps API Product Manager