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Requests and Return Types
Direction Requests
There are four POST directions requests that all accept the same request body and differ only in the result types, specified by the last path parameter:
POST /v2/directions/{profile} <- returns JSON
POST /v2/directions/{profile}/json
POST /v2/directions/{profile}/geojson
POST /v2/directions/{profile}/gpx
Additionally, there is one simple GET request that does not allow advanced request options. It returns GeoJSON:
GET /v2/directions/{profile} <- returns GeoJSON
Return Types
JSON
The JSON output format is the most flexible and best suited one for further processing. Its top level structure consists of three main fields:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
bbox | Bounding box [minLon, minLat, maxLon, maxLat] covering all of the routes in the response. |
routes | List of routes. |
metadata | Additional details about the request and routing engine, including attribution, service, timestamp, query, and engine info. |
Each of the routes entries can contain the following fields.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
summary | Properties of the route such as total distance (m) and duration (s). |
segments | List of route sections between waypoints, each with distance, duration, and steps containing turn-by-turn navigation instructions if these have been requested. |
bbox | Bounding box of the route. |
Furthermore, if route geometry has been requested (which is the default), the following fields are present.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
geometry | The path of the route. In JSON it is encoded, while in GeoJSON it is a LineString with explicit coordinates. |
way_points | Indices of way points corresponding to the geometry. |
GeoJSON
GeoJSON is a standardized format for encoding a variety of geographic data structures, see geojson.org. It is widely used and can therefore be easily processed or displayed in many applications, e.g. in QGIS or on geojson.io.
The GeoJSON output contains the same routing information as its JSON counterpart, but organized in slightly different way.
In the GeoJSON format, the route data is structured as a standard FeatureCollection where individual routes are represented as features. Each Feature includes a geometry of type LineString and properties that contain the same fields as the routes elements in the JSON format, i.e. summary, segments, way_points, etc.
GPX
The GPX return type is an XML dialect from openrouteservice based on the GPS Exchange Format with its own XML Schema. It is a very old standard for lightweight interchange of GPS data and thus being used by a wide range of software applications and Web services.
More details on the structure of the different return types can be found in the API Playground.