BaseCamp API calls

Unfortunately, no such API exists.

What kind of distance are you interested in? Do you need routing, or just as-the-crow-flies? And what time? There might be different APIs out there already (in addition to Bing).

Yes, I'm interested in routing distances and travel times.

Correct, I know there are other APIs, but the results always differ from BaseCamp (for logical reasons), so none are perfect for what I want to do.

I create custom trip reports that take as input BaseCamp routes exported as gpx. Unfortunately, BaseCamp does not export routing distances/times in the gpx file, nor does it expose that info in a friendly way when copying it to the clipboard (it's there, but in an undocumented packed binary way).

Thanks

Keep clickin'. There is a way.

It'd be rather useful to me to be able to make simple API calls (of sorts) to BaseCamp from my own external apps. All I need is time and distance between two points.

Developing an API is a lot of work and it's a big commitment that locks a company into supporting it "forever".

Are there a lot of people needing this? Is there a significant opportunity for Garmin to put the required effort in?

I create custom trip reports that take as input BaseCamp routes exported as gpx. Unfortunately, BaseCamp does not export routing distances/times in the gpx file.

What generates the trip reports? Do you program?

You could export the route as a track gpx file. It's would not be too hard to write a program that computes the distance and time (I've done it).

The route gpx file has a time field for each route point (rtept tag).

<time>2015-05-14T16:51:50Z</time>

nor does it expose that info in a friendly way when copying it to the clipboard (it's there, but in an undocumented packed binary way).

If you double click on the route/track and get the property windows, copying the tables/lists there produce text in the clipboard.

I'm not sure how/what you are copying routes to the clipboard but it would seem Basecamp is using it for an internal purpose. That is, the idea is that Basecamp doesn't want to commit to a format that people can use (they want to be able to change what they are doing without the risk of breaking people's odd dependencies).

...The route gpx file has a time field for each route point (rtept tag).

<time>2015-05-14T16:51:50Z</time>
...

Yes, it has, but that date/time is not a route arrival/departure data, it's a waypoint creation timestamp and therefore useless for routing.

It'd be rather useful to me to be able to make simple API calls (of sorts) to BaseCamp from my own external apps. All I need is time and distance between two points.

Right now I'm forced to make those API calls to Bing, which works fine, but there are inevitable differences in the way BC and Bing calculate time and distance for the same data. If I could query just one (BC) I'd be happy.

If the paste below is all you are looking for, just scroll down to the last line in Route Directions to copy/paste.

1. East Canton to Sturgis1, 1634 mi, 27 h, 24 min, 0.0° true, N44° 24.896' W103° 30.539'

Not exactly what I was after but still very useful, thank you.

I can copy->paste->save to txt->parse that data and get most if not all I need.

I'm happy.