Calculating distance between adresses using Google API in Excel (VBA) - excel

Question

I'm working on my master's thesis and really need your help with some distance calculations.
I am really struggling with some code I found online in order to calculate the distance between several addresses (~10k pairs). I tried two different codes from two websites, and they both give me an error.
I already created my own Google API, and activated billing (using the URL test actually works for me) and tried some suggestions from other forums.
1. Approach
Found on: https://analystcave.com/excel-calculate-distances-between-addresses/
Code
'Calculate Google Maps distance between two addresses
Public Function GetDistance(start As String, dest As String)
Dim firstVal As String, secondVal As String, lastVal As String
firstVal = "http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/distancematrix/json?origins="
secondVal = "&destinations="
lastVal = "&mode=car&language=pl&sensor=false&key=YOUR_KEY"
Set objHTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
URL = firstVal & Replace(start, " ", "+") & secondVal & Replace(dest, " ", "+") & lastVal
objHTTP.Open "GET", URL, False
objHTTP.setRequestHeader "User-Agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"
objHTTP.send ("")
If InStr(objHTTP.responseText, """distance"" : {") = 0 Then GoTo ErrorHandl
Set regex = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp"): regex.Pattern = """value"".*?([0-9]+)": regex.Global = False
Set matches = regex.Execute(objHTTP.responseText)
tmpVal = Replace(matches(0).SubMatches(0), ".", Application.International(xlListSeparator))
GetDistance = CDbl(tmpVal)
Exit Function
ErrorHandl:
GetDistance = -1
End Function
Every time I'm applying the formula, I get a "-1" i.e. error message.
2. Approach
Found on: https://syntaxbytetutorials.com/excel-function-to-calculate-distance-using-google-maps-api-with-vba/
Here I also added VBA-JSON and activated references as suggested by the author.
Code
' Returns the number of seconds it would take to get from one place to another
Function TRAVELDISTANCE(origin, destination, apikey)
Dim strUrl As String
strUrl = "https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/directions/json?origin=" & origin & "&destination=" & destination & "&key=" & apikey
Set httpReq = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")
With httpReq
.Open "GET", strUrl, False
.Send
End With
Dim response As String
response = httpReq.ResponseText
Dim parsed As Dictionary
Set parsed = JsonConverter.ParseJson(response)
Dim meters As Integer
Dim leg As Dictionary
For Each leg In parsed("routes")(1)("legs")
meters = meters + leg("distance")("value")
Next leg
TRAVELDISTANCE = meters
End Function
Here, the functions actually do not compile due to an error in the line
strUrl = "https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/directions/json?origin=" & origin & "&destination=" & destination & "&key=" & apikey
It returns the "Expected: end of statement" error.
I am completely lost and would be so grateful if anyone of you could provide some help.
Best,
Felix

Answer 1

As far as the second approach is concerned, according to this, the URL should look like the following example:
https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/directions/json?origin=Disneyland&destination=Universal+Studios+Hollywood&key=YOUR_API_KEY
So in your case, if you have a variable named origin, another one named destination and a third one named apikey, the URL should be built like so:
strUrl ="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/directions/json?origin=" & origin & "&destination=" & destination & "&key=" & apikey
The function would have to be called like so, for example:
call TRAVELDISTANCE("Disneyland", "Universal+Studios+Hollywood", "xxxxx")
I suppose what happened is that in the website where you found the original code, the & character was resolved in its HTML version which is: &. This however will give an error in VBA.
So before copying and pasting something you need to understand how it works.
To combine strings the following applies in general:
finalString= String1 & String2 & "String3" & "String4" & ..... 'depending on whether your strings are stored in variables or not.