Storing Lat Lng values in MySQL using Spatial Point Type

Question

Tech used: MySQL 5.1 and PHP 5.3

I am just designing a new database for a site I am writing. I am looking at the best way of now storing Lat and Lng values.

Answer 1

If you can affor placing some extra code into your backend, use Geohash.

It encodes a coordinate into a string in a way that prefixes denote a broader area. The longer your string is, the more precision you have.

And it has bindings for many languages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/geohashes.html