how can I get congestion information from google maps APIs - google-maps

For my project I need to extract congestion information through a route obtained from Google's map API. I went through Google's Direction API, it just provides information regarding the estimated time of travel through that route. Please Help. Thank You in advance.

I believe currently there is no any endpoint to get this information from Google. You might be interested in the following feature request that I can see in Google issue tracker:
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/65322481
Please star this feature request and add a comment that explains your use case.
UPDATE
It looks like the feature request mentioned above was rejected by Google (I assume this is also a reason for downvote).
There is another feature request for real-time traffic data for a particular route on maps
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36537583
The latter is still valid and marked as Assigned and Neat Idea.
Please star the feature request everybody who is interested in it.

Related

Google Maps API - Number of customers for places

I'm reading the documentation of GM-APIs, I found the section relative to "Places", but I can't find anything to get the information about the per-hour number of customers for a certain place.
Do you know whenever you search a place on GMaps, there is an indication of the frequency of customers, in that way you can know if the place will be busy or empty.
Is there any way to retrieve that information through Google Maps API?
Currently, there is no available feature in Google Maps API that could get the exact number or the of people in an establishment to determine its busiest time of the day.
However, there is an existing Feature Request in Google Map Platform's Public issue tracker to expose the place's popular times which seems to be related to the feature you are looking for.
Here's the link to that feature request: https://issuetracker.google.com/35827350. You can star/favorite this feature request and feel free to leave a comment there regarding your use case for additional information as well.

How can I access events data for a place in google maps?

I wanted to use Google Places API to get nearby places (music venues, pubs, theaters, etc.) in given city, then look for events in these places. And if you look at some places on google maps, you can see that there is a section 'Upcoming Events', so I'm sure the data is here. The problem is, Place Details endpoint does not provide with such information, although upon some research I found some information that told me otherwise, namely this, however I am aware that this information is pretty old at best. My question is - is this feature of API still available, or was it removed, or what?
Currently what I'm doing is first sending the request like this:
https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/nearbysearch/json?key={api_key}&location={city}&radius={some_radius}
to get all the places available, then for each place_id in response:
https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/details/json?key={key}&placeid={place_id}
The fields in these responses are not including any info about events, even if the place have the section 'Upcoming Events' on google maps.
There is a feature request for Events API in the Google issue tracker:
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/137032001
I would suggest staring the feature request to add your vote and subscribe to further notifications from Google. Hopefully one day they implement this API and expose events via APIs.

Is it possible to avoid tolls in Google Maps URLs latest version?

In the old Maps URLs API, you could add "&dirflg=dt" in the URL.
Here's an example URL using the new API taken from Google's official pages here:
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/?api=1&origin=Google+Pyrmont+NSW&destination=QVB&destination_place_id=ChIJISz8NjyuEmsRFTQ9Iw7Ear8&travelmode=driving
In the Google official pages, I was unable to find anything related to sending it flags to avoid tolls so I'm not even sure if it is possible with the new API.
Does someone have any info to enlighten me with? Thanks for reading.
:)
This is not possible with the Maps URL in this version, but you can do this manually after loading the directions.
You can try this:
Load the URL. (eg.:
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/?api=1&origin=Google+Pyrmont+NSW&destination=QVB&destination_place_id=ChIJISz8NjyuEmsRFTQ9Iw7Ear8&travelmode=driving)
On the left part of the screen, click OPTIONS.
Under Avoid, check Tolls.
However, if you want this functionality to be in the parameters, you can send your ideas by going in the Maps URLs Documentation and click SEND FEEDBACK. Or you can submit this as a Feature Request in Google Issue Tracker
Hope this helps!
This is possible, but you have to use "undocumented" features.
Warning: Since these are not documented features, they probably aren't official and likely subject to change without notice. Use in production at your own risk.
tldr:
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/{origin}/{destination}/data=!4m3!4m2!2m1!2b1
Plug in origin and destination and it should load directions, avoiding toll roads.
Explanation:
Here, we are using Google's own data/options string (see: "data=") to get the desired functionality. It is meant to be used by the Google Map's web app itself to communicate options selected on the page. This article (and the ones following it) explain how to create your own "data=" strings to customize how the map is configured. It's quite comprehensive, but like I said above, its not an official feature.

Way to see if a Google Maps place is verified/claimed without access to someones GMB account

Is there a way to see if a Google Maps place is verified/claimed on GMB? At the moment we use the place details API to get the details for a specific location. However the place details API does not provide us with a way to see if the location has been verified/claimed.
The problem is that we don't have access to the GMB account for the found location so we can't check if the "place_id" in the GMB response is equal to the one we use for getting the place details.
Unfortunately, the verified/claimed property of the business place is not exposed in the Places API at the moment. I can see a feature request in the Google issue tracker to add verified/claimed field in the response of place details:
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/35819976
Currently this feature request has 60 stars, however it looks like Google didn't set high priority on this task. Feel free to star the feature request to express your interest and subscribe to further notifications.

Is it possible to get the restaurant wait time estimate from google maps?

I checked the API document from google map API. However, there's no directly answer about the API allow user to get restaurant wait time estimation.
Is there anyone has experience to download this information?
Although such a feature is not yet exposed by the Places API, you can use this Python library to get what you need. Hope this helps