Question

I need to calculate the distance between two addresses and I don’t need a map view or anything graphical.

I simply want the user to type in the address (end location is defined by myself) and let the javascript calculate the distance between the two points.

However I don’t find a way to send an address string and get the GPS-coordinates from it using the Google Maps API.

(I really only need the two GPS points, the distance calculation is trivial.)

Answer 1

What you are trying to do is called geocoding. It is possible with the Maps API. See the Geocoding section for more details. This is the basic idea:

var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder();
geocoder.geocode({
    "address": inputAddress
}, function(results) {
    console.log(results[0].geometry.location); //LatLng
});

However, you are limited to 2500 geocoding requests a day, and what you are trying to do is against the terms of use:

Note: the Geocoding API may only be used in conjunction with a Google
map; geocoding results without displaying them on a map is prohibited.