A way to access google streetview from R?

Question

There is a very nice interface to google earth images available via ggmap. For example:

ggmap::get_map(location = c(lon = -95.3632715, lat = 29.7632836), 
               maptype ="satellite",zoom=20)

will return a satellite map image from Google Maps/Earth. On Google Maps website if you zoom a bit more, it switches to streetview. Is there a similar way from R to get the streetview images?

There does seem to be an API, but can't find anything analogous to the ggmap interface in R.

Answer 1

My googleway package has a google map widget (and also works with Shiny).

You'll need a valid Google API key to use it

library(googleway)

key <- "your_api_key"

df <- data.frame(lat = -37.817714,
                 lon = 144.967260,
                 info = "Flinders Street Station")

google_map(key = key, height = 600, search_box = T) %>%
    add_markers(data = df, info_window = "info")

## other available methods
# add_markers
# add_heatmap
# add_circles
# add_traffic
# add_bicycling
# add_transit

Satellite

Satellite / Street

Street view

(notice the marker is still there)

---

Update - Static Street view map

There's also a google_streetview() function that will download a static streetview image (using the Google Street View Static Image API)

google_streetview(location = c(-37.8177, 144.967),
                  size = c(400,400),
                  panorama_id = NULL,
                  output = "plot",
                  heading = 90,
                  fov = 90,
                  pitch = 0,
                  response_check = FALSE,
                  key = key)

Answer 2

There's not current an R package that does this, however I can offer you 2 hacks to get the job done.

1. Use rvest, other scraping packages, or even simply download.file with one of the many independent websites that provide different interfaces/views of streetview data.

   That way you can just parameterize the URI and download the target image.

2. Use V8 (possibly leveraging browserify) to run the npm package extract-streetview.