Docs say RouteMatrixElement.duration is Duration, but runtime returns datetime.timedelta

[dnapoli97]

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Summary of the issue

Context
I was using google-maps-routing and inspecting RouteMatrixElement.duration from a compute_route_matrix response.

Expected Behavior:
The documentation indicates that RouteMatrixElement.duration is a google.protobuf.duration_pb2.Duration.

Actual Behavior:
At runtime, RouteMatrixElement.duration is returned as a datetime.timedelta object.

This appears to be a documentation or generated type-surface mismatch rather than a server-side API problem. The underlying protobuf field may be Duration, but the Python client returns the marshaled native Python type.

API client name and version

google-maps-routing 0.10.0

Reproduction steps: code

file: main.py

from datetime import timedelta
from google.maps import routing_v2

def main():
    client = routing_v2.RoutesClient()

    request = routing_v2.ComputeRouteMatrixRequest(
        origins=[
            routing_v2.RouteMatrixOrigin(
                waypoint=routing_v2.Waypoint(
                    address="1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA"
                )
            )
        ],
        destinations=[
            routing_v2.RouteMatrixDestination(
                waypoint=routing_v2.Waypoint(
                    address="1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA"
                )
            )
        ],
        travel_mode=routing_v2.RouteTravelMode.DRIVE,
    )

    stream = client.compute_route_matrix(
        request=request,
        metadata=[(
            "x-goog-fieldmask",
            "originIndex,destinationIndex,status,condition,distanceMeters,duration"
        )],
    )

    element = next(iter(stream))

    print("type:", type(element.duration))
    print("is timedelta:", isinstance(element.duration, timedelta))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Reproduction steps: supporting files

Reproduction steps: actual results

type: <class 'datetime.timedelta'>
is timedelta: True

Reproduction steps: expected results

type: <class 'google.protobuf.duration_pb2.Duration'>
is timedelta: False

OS & version + platform

Window 11 25H2

Python environment

Python 3.11.9

Python dependencies

pip list

Package	Version
altgraph	0.17.5
certifi	2026.2.25
cffi	2.0.0
charset-normalizer	3.4.6
cryptography	46.0.6
google-api-core	2.30.1
google-auth	2.49.1
google-geo-type	0.6.0
google-maps-routing	0.10.0
googleapis-common-protos	1.73.1
greenlet	3.3.2
grpcio	1.80.0
grpcio-status	1.80.0
idna	3.11
jellyfish	1.2.1
packaging	26.0
pefile	2024.8.26
pip	24.2
proto-plus	1.27.2
protobuf	6.33.6
pyasn1	0.6.3
pyasn1_modules	0.4.2
pycparser	3.0
pyinstaller	6.19.0
pyinstaller-hooks-contrib	2026.4
pyodbc	5.3.0
python-dateutil	2.9.0.post0
python-dotenv	1.2.2
pywin32-ctypes	0.2.3
requests	2.33.1
setuptools	82.0.1
six	1.17.0
SQLAlchemy	2.0.48
typing_extensions	4.15.0
urllib3	2.6.3
wheel	0.44.0

Additional context

This appears to be a documentation or generated type-surface mismatch rather than a server-side Routes API bug.

The docs for RouteMatrixElement.duration describe the protobuf field type (google.protobuf.duration_pb2.Duration), but at runtime the Python client returns the marshaled native Python type (datetime.timedelta). That makes the docs misleading when trying to write type-aware Python code.

If this behavior is intentional because of proto-plus marshalling, the documentation should reflect the runtime Python type. If it is not intentional, then the runtime type is inconsistent with the documented type.