get_map not passing the API key (HTTP status was '403 Forbidden')

Question

I have been facing this issue in the get_map() function (ggmap library) in R.

My code was running without the need to specify an API key

Answer 1

Just to add to Roman Abashin's answer (I can't comment, unfortunately): As per '?get_map()', the 'api_key =' argument doesn't work for Google maps. You'll need to use the 'register_google()' function, but as of 03/10/18, it's only in the development version of ggmap, which you can get like so:

devtools::install_github("dkahle/ggmap", ref = "tidyup")

Then you'll also need to enable billing on your Google account, though the first 100,000 maps you use each month should be free, see here: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ for details.

(tips drawn from here: https://github.com/dkahle/ggmap/issues/51)