NAME

Geo::Google::Segment - An annotated segment of a path

SYNOPSIS

  use Geo::Google::Segment;
  # you shouldn't need to construct these yourself,
  # have a Geo::Google object do it for you.

DESCRIPTION

Google Maps is able to serve up directions between two points. Directions consist of two types of components:

  1. a series of points along a "polyline".
  2. a series of annotations, each of which applies to a contiguous
  range of points.

In the Geo::Google object model, directions are available by calling path() on a Geo::Google instance. The return value is a Geo::Google::Path object, which is a composite of Geo::Google::Segment objects, which are in turn composites of Geo::Google::Location objects.

In Google Earth, they're used as XML inside a .KML file or xml server response. Individual segments are used in Google Maps as HTML with JavaScript inside a JSON response from the server. The JSON structure used by Google Maps doesn't actually contain segments. They are implied by the HTML in the "panel" portion of the response and activate JavaScript that re-renders the map window after extracting coordinates from the polyline object.

OBJECT METHODS

Geo::Google::Segment objects provide the following accessor methods

 Method      Description
 ------      -----------
 from        a Geo::Google::Location at the beginning of the segment.
 distance    length of the segment, in variable, human friendly units.
 id          a unique identifier for this point.
 pointIndex  the offset, in 0-based points, at which the segment begins
             relative to the start of the path.
 points      a list of Geo::Google::Location points along the segment.
 html        a description of the segment, typically some human-readable
             description of this leg of a path, e.g "make a u-turn at
             McLaughlin Ave".
 text        a scrubbed version of the html() function's output
 time        a time estimate, in variable, human-friendly units for how long
             the segment will take to travel by automobile.
 to          a Geo::Google::Location at the end of the segment.
 toXML       a method that renders the segment in XML that could be used as part of a Google Earth KML file.

SEE ALSO

Geo::Google

AUTHOR

Allen Day <allenday@ucla.edu>, Michael Trowbridge <michael.a.trowbridge@gmail.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2004-2007 Allen Day. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.