Working with latitude/longitude values in Java

Question

Does anyone know of any free utility jars for java that assist with longitude/latitude manipulation in Java?

I am wanting to find the distance between two different points. This I know can be accomplished with the great circle distance. http://www.meridianworlddata.com/Distance-calculation.asp

Also, given a point and a distance I would like to find the point that distance north, and that distance east in order to create a box around the point.

Answer 1

A quick Google search turns up GeoTools, which likely has the kind of functions you are looking for.

Answer 2

We've had some success using OpenMap to plot a lot of positional data. There's a LatLonPoint class that has some basic functionality, including distance.

Answer 3

We use Jcoord.

Answer 4

Here is a Java implementation of Haversine formula. I use this in a project to calculate distance in miles between lat/longs.

  public static float distFrom(float lat1, float lng1, float lat2, float lng2) {
    double earthRadius = 3958.75;
    double dLat = Math.toRadians(lat2-lat1);
    double dLng = Math.toRadians(lng2-lng1);
    double a = Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +
               Math.cos(Math.toRadians(lat1)) * Math.cos(Math.toRadians(lat2)) *
               Math.sin(dLng/2) * Math.sin(dLng/2);
    double c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1-a));
    double dist = earthRadius * c;

    return new Float(dist).floatValue();
    }

Answer 5

If you use Jcoord, beware the commercial licensing restrictions

Answer 6

Or you could use SimpleLatLng. Apache 2.0 licensed and used in one production system that I know of: mine.

Short story:

I was searching for a simple geo library and couldn't find one to fit my needs. And who wants to write and test and debug these little geo tools over and over again in every application? There's got to be a better way!

So SimpleLatLng was born as a way to store latitude-longitude data, do distance calculations, and create shaped boundaries.

I know I'm two years too late to help the original poster, but my aim is to help the people like me who find this question in a search. I would love to have some people use it and contribute to the testing and vision of this little lightweight utility.