Track the Mileage

[jim shelton]

I am looking for a plug-in that will allow us to track mileage from one single to Zip Code to other US Zip Codes.

thanks,

Jim

[fseipel]

I would suggest using the 360Works ScriptMaster plugin for this. The included GetURL As Text function can be used, with a URL such as:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from+FROM+to+TO&output=kml

where FROM=from zip code or address and TO=ending address or zip code.

The Position function may then be used to parse out the text results from this function. The data you want lies between "CDATA[Distance:" and "

" -- extract distance in miles or km, drive time, etc.

Alternately the WebViewer can be used for this, but it requires a webviewer layout element (even if only one pixel).

[cheekus124]

If you want to do this entirely in Filemaker with one calculation, here is the calculation and data set for determining the distance between any two US ZIP codes.

I did this recently as part of another project. I created a distance formula by recoding one from Excel and then used freely available data that lists the lat lon for all US ZIP codes. Here is the equation:

##code start:

If (

_CountryID ≠ "001" or IsEmpty (PostalCodes::Latitude);

5000;

Round (

6371 * 2 * Asin (

Sqrt (

( Sin ( ( Radians (_gSearch_Latitude) - Radians (PostalCodes::Latitude) ) / 2 ) ^ 2 )

+

Cos ( Radians (_gSearch_Latitude) )

*

Cos ( Radians (PostalCodes::Latitude) )

*

( Sin ( ( Radians (_gSearch_Longitude) - Radians (PostalCodes::Longitude) ) / 2 ) ^ 2 )

)

);

0

)

)

# code end

I had multiple country data in my set, so I used the if() so that it only calculated distances for US addresses. The ZIP code data set is attached.

US.zip