Return distance in elasticsearch results? - geolocation

Question

My question is similar to this one.
Simply, is there a way to return the geo distance when NOT sorting with _geo_distance?
Update:
To clarify, I want the results in random order AND include distance.

Answer 1

Yes you can, by using a script field.
For instance, assuming your doc have a geo-point field called location, you could use the following:
(note the \u0027 is just an escaped single quote, so \u0027location\u0027 is really 'location')
curl -XGET 'http://127.0.0.1:9200/geonames/_search?pretty=1' -d '
{
"script_fields" : {
"distance" : {
"params" : {
"lat" : 2.27,
"lon" : 50.3
},
"script" : "doc[\u0027location\u0027].distanceInKm(lat,lon)"
}
}
}
'
# [Thu Feb 16 11:20:29 2012] Response:
# {
# "hits" : {
# "hits" : [
# {
# "_score" : 1,
# "fields" : {
# "distance" : 466.844095463887
# },
# "_index" : "geonames_1318324623",
# "_id" : "6436641_en",
# "_type" : "place"
# },
... etc
If you want the _source field to be returned as well, then you can specify that as follows:
curl -XGET 'http://127.0.0.1:9200/geonames/_search?pretty=1' -d '
{
"fields" : [ "_source" ],
"script_fields" : {
"distance" : {
"params" : {
"lat" : 2.27,
"lon" : 50.3
},
"script" : "doc[\u0027location\u0027].distanceInKm(lat,lon)"
}
}
}
'

Answer 2

Great answer by DrTech ... here is an updated version for Elasticsearch 5.x with painless as the script language. I also added "store_fields" to include _source in the result:
curl -XGET 'http://127.0.0.1:9200/geonames/_search?pretty=1' -d '
{
"stored_fields" : [ "_source" ],
"script_fields" : {
"distance" : {
"script" : {
"inline": "doc['location'].arcDistance(params.lat,params.lon) * 0.001",
"lang": "painless",
"params": {
"lat": 2.27,
"lon": 50.3
}
}
}
}
}'

Answer 3

To return distance aswel as as all the default fields/source, you could also do this:
To avoid that it sorts by distance (primarily) you just sort by _score (or whatever you want the results sorted by) first.
{
"sort": [
"_score",
{
"_geo_distance": {
"location": {
"lat": 40.715,
"lon": -73.998
},
"order": "asc",
"unit": "km",
"distance_type": "plane"
}
}
]
}

Answer 4

Since ES 1.3 MVEL is disabled by default so use a query like:
GET some-index/_search
{
"sort": [
{
"_geo_distance": {
"geo_location": "47.1, 8.1",
"order": "asc",
"unit": "m"
}
}
],
"query": {
"match_all": {}
},
"script_fields" : {
"distance" : {
"lang": "groovy",
"params" : {
"lat" : 47.1,
"lon" : 8.1
},
"script" : "doc[\u0027geo_location\u0027].distanceInKm(lat,lon)"
}
}
}
see: "lang": "groovy", part