As you might expect, in offering a Routing API, Azure Maps covers the basics as noted on our product page:
“Present the shortest or fastest routes available – to multiple destinations at a time – or provide routes and facts for walkers, cyclists and commercial vehicles. Optimize route calculations with isochrones, matrix routing and batch routing.”
But you can really do so much more if you add just another dimension to the scenario:
Add a range to your route:
This option is amazing for scenarios like “What restaurants are within 10 minutes from my home?” or “Where is the closest fuel station within the distance I can travel with the fuel that is in my car right now? |
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Add & filter data along your route:
I have been building my own list of fruit trees within my neighborhood and I can now filter them based on season and location. Using Azure Maps, I can either create an optimized route to pass by certain trees at certain times or I can see which ones I can visit while on a route I was planning to take from A to B. |
Search for POIs along route:
POI, or Points of Interest, can be anything from a business, such as a restaurant or fueling station, to a national monument, such as the Space Needle or Statue of Liberty. Whether you are looking just for a place to eat or make an epic family trip, Azure Maps can help you realize where these important locations are relative to the experience you are building. |
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Add traffic along your route:
Although the traffic is considered when you use the route API (unless you deactivate it) with this option you can visualize how the traffic is in the route.
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Add weather along your route:
Weather conditions can affect your drive, with the weather service APIs, powered by Accuweather, provided through Azure Maps you can check out the weather conditions along your expected route.
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Get a route based on your vehicle type :
There are multiple factors to consider when we need to calculate the route for a truck rather than a car; width, height, length, weight and load are some of the options you can setup to calculate this route. Our sample shows you the difference between a truck and a car’s route based on such factors.
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Optimize waypoints to get a better route:
If you need to find out the shortest distance for a route of multiple points this option provides you what you need, in this sample you can find 7 addresses for a total of 138.85 km shortened to 92.36 km.
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To see more great examples of how Azure Maps Routes can be used in so many more ways that you expected, Check out Azure Maps Web SDK Samples
Tutorial: Web SDK Tutorials - Search for a location and more
Links:
- Microsoft Azure maps Product page: Azure Maps – Geospatial Services APIs | Microsoft Azure
- Documentation: Azure Maps Documentation | Microsoft Docs
- Web Control Documentation: Getting started with Microsoft Azure Maps web map control | Microsoft Docs
- Web Control Samples: https://samples.AzureMaps.com/
Thank you for checking out Azure Maps Route APIs. All of the samples above are directly accessible through the links and have Github repositories for you to leverage the sample code within your solutions. If you need any assistance or have any questions feel free to post them in our Q&A section, we are here to help!
Updated Mar 23, 2025
Version 6.0
IoTGirl
Microsoft
Microsoft