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Idea for future functionality: distance from...

Idea for future functionality: distance from...


Postby ColinBrough » Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:18 am

I don't know how possible this would be, but wondered about the following functionality through walkhighlands:

- some way of noting a default base from which you normally start any trips - typically your home - eg by postcode. Then some kind of plugin access to Google Maps to get a drive time from your home to the start point of a walk. Would show up alongside the "Open Start point in Google Maps" link on the walk as "1hr 30 minutes from HOME (Open Start point in Google Maps)".

- given the above functionality, further options for gathering walks - anything within 2 hours of home, or anything with a total trip time of less than 10 hours, or anything with an uncompleted Munro with a total trip time of .... perhaps sorted by trip time?

I can do all that manually myself, but might be a nice addition. And if you go on holiday for a weeks walking, change "home" to the postcode of your accommodation in and see what walks are within striking distance locally...
ColinBrough
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Re: Idea for future functionality: distance from...

Postby Paul Webster » Thu Oct 07, 2021 3:20 pm

Hi Colin. It would be great to do things like this with Google - we used to have driving instructions that worked to get to the start of every route.

The technology exists. However, these days it's prohibitively expensive for a busy website like Walkhighlands to make the calls to Google for routing etc. This is why we changed our start point links so that they actually take users away to Google Maps, rather than a page with functionality on Walkhighlands. This means users can easily see how far away it is, access driving or public transport, etc. without us having to pay Google for that functionality.

For the same reason, our walk search relies on distance from any postcode or address (or simply where you are) from our own server-hosted location database, and works by distance as-the-crow-flies as accessing data using roads would be involve expensive calls to Google.

Hope that makes sense.
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Paul Webster
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Re: Idea for future functionality: distance from...

Postby ColinBrough » Sun Oct 24, 2021 8:41 pm

Paul, thanks, appreciate the follow-up. And yeah, there are lots of things in life that would be nice, but...!
ColinBrough
Mountaineer
 
Posts: 19
Munros:41   Corbetts:8
Fionas:5   Donalds:4
Sub 2000:9   
Islands:4
Joined: Oct 6, 2016




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