Euclidean Distance Calculator

The following snippet returns the euclidean distance between two places on the globe using the Yahoo Maps API. Replace API_KEY with your Yahoo Maps API key.

 1 #!/usr/bin/env python
 2 # Distance Module
 3 # by Pravin Paratey (pravinp at gmail dot com)
 4 # Code is licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 India
 5 # http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/in/
 6 
 7 import urllib2, cgi, re
 8 from math import sqrt
 9 
10 class Distance:
11     """
12     Using yahoo maps api (http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/rest/V1/geocode.html),
13     this class is responsible for returning the euclidean distance between
14     two places
15     """
16     def getDistance(self, start, end):
17         """ Gets the euclidean distance between start and end """
18         (start_x, start_y) = self.getCoords(start)
19         (end_x, end_y) = self.getCoords(end)
20         # 1 degree = 111.12 kms or 69.047 miles
21         return sqrt((start_x - end_x) ** 2 + (start_y - end_y) ** 2) * 111.12
22 
23 
24     def getCoords(self, location):
25         """ Gets the co-ordinates for the given location """
26         url = 'http://local.yahooapis.com/MapsService/V1/geocode?appid=' +
27                 API_KEY + '&street=' + urllib2.quote(location)
28         response = urllib2.urlopen(url)
29         (x, y) = self._parseXML(response.read())
30         return float(x), float(y)
31 
32 
33     def _parseXML(self, xml):
34         """ Parses XML and returns latitude and longitude """
35         m = re.findall('<latitude>(\d+.\d+)</latitude><longitude>(\d+.\d+)</longitude>', xml)
36         # In case of multiple matches, return 1st match
37         return m[0]
38 
39 if __name__ == '__main__':
40     d = Distance()
41     print 'Distance in kms: '
42     print d.getDistance("Hiranandani, Powai, Mumbai", "Dadar Station, Mumbai")