Ignore Results Outside of Distance Range

Question

I am working with ElasticSearch for an application which deals with "posts". I currently have it working with a geo_point so that it will return all posts ordered by distance from the end-user. While this is working I also need to work in one more aspect for the system.

Posts can be paid for and for instance if I were to pay for my post and choose "Local" as the area range then this post should only show to end-users which are less than or equal to 20 miles away.

I have a column on my index named spotlight_range, is there a way I can create a query to say ignore all records if the spotlight_range = 'Local' and the distance is > 20 miles? I need to do this for several different spotlight ranges. For instance Regional may be 100 miles or less, etc.

My current query looks like this

$params = [
    'index' => 'my_index',
    'type' => 'posts',
    'size' => 25,
    'from' => 0,
    'body' => [
        'sort' => [
            '_geo_distance' => [
                'post_location' => [
                    'lat' => '44.4759',
                    'lon' => '-73.2121'
                ],
                'order' => 'asc',
                'unit' => 'mi'
            ]
        ],
        'query' => [
            'filtered' => [
                'query' => [
                    'match_all' => []
                ],
                'filter' => [
                    'geo_distance' => [
                        'distance' => '100mi',
                        'post_location' => [
                            'lat' => '44.4759',
                            'lon' => '-73.2121'
                        ]
                    ]
                ]
            ]
        ]
    ]
];

My index is setup with the following fields.

'id' => ['type' => 'integer'],
'title' => ['type' => 'string'],
'description' => ['type' => 'string'],
'price' => ['type' => 'integer'],
'shippable' => ['type' => 'boolean'],
'username' => ['type' => 'string'],
'post_location' => ['type' => 'geo_point'],
'post_location_string' => ['type' => 'string'],
'is_spotlight' => ['type' => 'boolean'],
'spotlight_range' => ['type' => 'string'],
'created_at' => ['type' => 'date', 'format' => 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss'],
'updated_at' => ['type' => 'date', 'format' => 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss']

My end goal for this is not specifically to search for distance < X and range = Y but rather to have it filter them out for all types based on distances I specify. The search should return ALL types of ranges but also filter out anything past my specified distance for each range type based on the users lat/lon passed into the query.

I have been looking for a solution to this online without much luck.

Answer 1

I would add a circle geo_shape to the document, centered on post_location and with a radius corresponding to the spotlight_range since you know both information at indexing time. That way you can encode into each post its corresponding "reach".

...
'post_location' => ['type' => 'geo_point'],
'spotlight_range' => ['type' => 'string'],
'reach' => ['type' => 'geo_shape'],            <---- add this

So a "local" document would look something like this once indexed

{
    "spotlight_range": "local",
    "post_location": { 
         "lat": 42.1526,
         "lon": -71.7378
    }, 
    "reach" : {
        "type" : "circle",
        "coordinates" : [-71.7378, 42.1526],
        "radius" : "20mi"
    }
}

Then the query would feature another geo_shape centered on the user's location with the chosen radius and would only retrieve documents whose reach intersects the circle shape in the query.

$params = [
    'index' => 'my_index',
    'type' => 'posts',
    'size' => 25,
    'from' => 0,
    'body' => [
        'sort' => [
            '_geo_distance' => [
                'post_location' => [
                    'lat' => '44.4759',
                    'lon' => '-73.2121'
                ],
                'order' => 'asc',
                'unit' => 'mi'
            ]
        ],
        'query' => [
            'filtered' => [
                'query' => [
                    'match_all' => []
                ],
                'filter' => [
                    'geo_shape' => [
                        'reach' => [
                           'relation' => 'INTERSECTS',
                           'shape' => [
                               'type' => 'circle',
                               'coordinates' => [-73.2121, 44.4759],
                               'radius' => '20mi'
                           ]
                        ]
                    ]
                ]
            ]
        ]
    ]
];