Mar 23, 2021 08:33 AM
Is there some way to use only Airtable instruments to calculate the great circle distance between two points?
I have those points with lat and long coordinates and need a formula to calculate the great circle distance (or something close to it, no need in high precision).
I know the haversine formula, but lack of trigonometry functions in Airtable makes the whole thing impossible. I am not into scripts, zapiers and web-hooks unfortunately.
I have a Google API key which is used to create maps from Airtable data, but I do not need to calculate road distance or time, only great circle (use case is aviation).
Just a formula of any complexity would be great.
Thanks to everyone concerned.
Mar 23, 2021 05:28 PM
Not possible (as you make clear).
You need to get into scripts - trust me; your life – especially with Airtable – will change.
You need only a couple of javascript functions in a script block to perform this geometric computation.
This is the Haversine function.
function getDistanceFromLatLonInKm(lat1,lon1,lat2,lon2) {
var R = 6371; // Radius of the earth in km
var dLat = deg2rad(lat2-lat1); // deg2rad below
var dLon = deg2rad(lon2-lon1);
var a =
Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +
Math.cos(deg2rad(lat1)) * Math.cos(deg2rad(lat2)) *
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;
}
function deg2rad(deg) {
return deg * (Math.PI/180)
}
Mar 24, 2021 01:20 AM
Thank you very much @Bill.French
I will try to figure out how to incorporate it in my base with zero scripting experience so far;-)