Is there a way to get some coordinates of the points in a MapQuest route between two points?

Question

I managed to get an optimized route between two points with leaflet and mapquest. This is the code for this:

dir = MQ.routing.directions();

  dir.optimizedRoute({
    locations: [
      start,
      end
    ]
  });

  CustomRouteLayer = MQ.Routing.RouteLayer.extend({
    createStartMarker: (location) => {
      const marker = L.marker(location.latLng).addTo(mymap);
      return marker;
    },

    createEndMarker: (location) => {
      const marker = L.marker(location.latLng, { icon: redIcon }).addTo(mymap);
      return marker;
    }

  });

  mymap.addLayer(new CustomRouteLayer({
    directions: dir,
    fitBounds: true,
  }));

The result is something like this:

However I didn't manage to get the coordinates of some points in this route. I need these points because I want to do an "animation" of how an object moves across the line.

Answer 1

I managed to get a list of points in the direction list, by listening to the 'success' event of MQ.routing.directions().optimizedRoute(). This event is fired 2 times, but only the second time it has the shape property.

dir.on('success', function (e) {
      if (e.route.shape) {
        arrLocations.push(...e.route.shape.shapePoints)
        console.log(arrLocations);
        resolve(arrLocations);
      }
})

Answer 2

I used to work with OSRM, not MapQuest, but reading their docs let me suggest you to use MapQuest's Route Shape endpoint (GET) as well to get your shape nodes coordinates.

Answer 3

Use the route function callback option to handle the route response. You'll probably need to uncompress the shape points once you have them. Here is how I did it.

    L.mapquest.directions().route({
      start: 'Denver,CO',
      end: 'Boulder,CO',
    },function(x,data){console.log(data.route.shape.shapePoints)});