Elasticsearch: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 36. Geo-Points

A geo-point is a single latitude/longitude point on the Earth’s surface. Geo-points can be used to calculate distance from a point, to determine whether a point falls within a bounding box, or in aggregations.

Geo-points cannot be automatically detected with dynamic mapping. Instead, geo_point fields should be mapped explicitly:

PUT /attractions
{
  "mappings": {
    "restaurant": {
      "properties": {
        "name": {
          "type": "string"
        },
        "location": {
          "type": "geo_point"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Lat/Lon Formats

With the location field defined as a geo_point, we can proceed to index documents containing latitude/longitude pairs, which can be formatted as strings, arrays, or objects:

PUT /attractions/restaurant/1
{
  "name":     "Chipotle Mexican Grill",
  "location": "40.715, -74.011" 
}

PUT /attractions/restaurant/2
{
  "name":     "Pala Pizza",
  "location": { 
    "lat":     40.722,
    "lon":    -73.989
  }
}

PUT /attractions/restaurant/3
{
  "name":     "Mini Munchies Pizza",
  "location": [ -73.983, 40.719 ] 
}

A string representation, with "lat,lon".

An object representation with lat and lon explicitly named.

An array representation ...