Question

Using JavaScript in the browser, how can I determine the distance from my current location to another location for which I have the latitude and longitude?

Answer 1

If your code runs in a browser, you can use the HTML5 geolocation API:

window.navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(pos) { 
  console.log(pos); 
  var lat = pos.coords.latitude;
  var lon = pos.coords.longitude;
})

Once you know the current position and the position of your “target”, you can calculate the distance between them in the way documented in this question: Calculate distance between two latitude-longitude points? (Haversine formula).

So the complete script becomes:

function distance(lon1, lat1, lon2, lat2) {
  var R = 6371; // Radius of the earth in km
  var dLat = (lat2-lat1).toRad();  // Javascript functions in radians
  var dLon = (lon2-lon1).toRad(); 
  var a = Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +
          Math.cos(lat1.toRad()) * Math.cos(lat2.toRad()) * 
          Math.sin(dLon/2) * Math.sin(dLon/2); 
  var c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1-a)); 
  var d = R * c; // Distance in km
  return d;
}

/** Converts numeric degrees to radians */
if (typeof(Number.prototype.toRad) === "undefined") {
  Number.prototype.toRad = function() {
    return this * Math.PI / 180;
  }
}

window.navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(pos) {
  console.log(pos); 
  console.log(
    distance(pos.coords.longitude, pos.coords.latitude, 42.37, 71.03)
  ); 
});

Apparently I am 6643 meters from the center of Boston, MA right now (that’s the hard-coded second location).

See these links for more information:

• http://html5demos.com/geo
• http://diveintohtml5.info/geolocation.html
• Calculate distance between two latitude-longitude points? (Haversine formula)
• toRad() Javascript function throwing error