openrouteservice API basics

The openrouteservice (ORS) is much more than a website with a route service for cars, pedestrians and bicycles based on Open Standards and Open Geodata. Several Location Based Services (LBS) created from OSM data are available.

Website / Maps Client

The ORS Maps Client allows you to do “normal” routing and isochrones. You can choose between several “profiles” for different modes of transportation, e.g. car, bicycle or pedestrian. Exploring the maps client is a good way to find out what ORS offers.

Fig. 42 The web interface for openrouteservice.

Quick-Exercise

Go to https://maps.openrouteservice.org/#/ and calculate a route for a pedestrian between the cities of Heidelberg and Neckargemünd passing by the Klosterhof brewery. Investigate the extra information such as elevation profile for the route.

Documentation of the openrouteservice API

Openrouteservice provides an API which allows you to embed routing requests in more complex workflows. The API documentation describes how the api can be used and offers a “playground” to send request interactively. Make sure to first sign up and create an account.

As for other APIs there are several endpoints, which will be suited for different types of analyses. Here we will mainly focus on the following endpoints:

• Directions

• Isochrones

Directions

This is the “standard” routing endpoint to calculate a basic route between two or more points.

• the routing profile (e.g driving-car, cycling-regular, foot-walking, wheelchair, …) can be adjusted in the path parameters

• additional options can be passed using the options parameters

You find some examples here. This offers you the possibility to avoid specific roads, custom defined areas or countries during routing.

Isochrones

Reachability (or also called accessibility) has become a crucial component for many businesses and researchers from all different kinds of domains. To this end, you can use openrouteservice to obtain isochrones which will help you determine which areas objects are able reach in given times or distances.

• similar to “standard” routing you need to specify a routing profile

• the range attribute defines for which classes the isochrones will be calculated (e.g. 5min, 15min, 30 min)

• make sure to set the range_type accordingly to either time or distance

Fig. 43 Isochrones derived using ORS for a 5 minute interval and the car profile.

openrouteservice-py

The openrouteservice python library gives you painless access to the openrouteservice (ORS) routing API’s. You can find example queries in the documentation.