[GIS] Retrieve road segment from Google or Bing Maps

bing-mapsgoogle maps

Let me see if I would be able to explain this correctly… Both Bing and Google Map geocoders can return you and a point given an address. Is there any way to retrieve an 'address range' instead i.e. to get returned a LINE rather than a point?

Its not necessarily address ranges I am after- the key word here is 'line' (along a road). Another example would be to get a road line given 2 points so I would want to get returned the road segment between these 2 points. I assume for this I would need to use the routing functions only?

Another scenario (i guess even more difficult) is given 1 point (along a road) to ask for the road segments for x Km 'up or down' this same road

Hope I am making sense…

Best Answer

Using Google Maps API v3 Directions you can achieve this road segment length using waypoints.

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/directions-waypoints.html

To work out line length http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-js-api-v3/browse_thread/thread/3a9f3b83b941a2d7/06792073b2529413?lnk=gst&q=polyline+length#06792073b2529413

No plugin required

There is a core functionality XYZ Tile Server provider which was implemented with some other nice UX enhancements for tiled services (available since QGIS 2.18). This means, that there is no need for an external plugin although for an easy setup you can still use external plugins (see bottom of this post) and it offers various improvements over pure plugin based solutions.

In the browser panel, locate the Tile Server entry and right click it to add a new service.

Enter the URL of the service which you would like to use, replacing x, y and z parts with curly brackets substitution as can be seen below.

Double Click the newly created entry to add the layer to the map.

Layers added this way:

Load faster
Support reprojection
Support printing
Are cached in a powerful way
Are compatible with QField

Some example URLs

OpenTopoMap

https://tile.opentopomap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

(See comment below for attribution)

OpenStreetMap

http://tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

Google Hybrid

https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=y&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}

Google Satellite

https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=s&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}

Google Road

https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=m&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}

(Codes for other tile types from Google found here)

Bing Aerial

http://ecn.t3.tiles.virtualearth.net/tiles/a{q}.jpeg?g=1

Configuration GUI

Since version 0.18.7 and in combination with QGIS >= 2.18.8 it's possible to use QuickMapServices as a very easy to use tool for configuring layers. Just check the "Use native renderer" checkbox (thanks @DmitryBaryshnikov)