how to get nearest value from database in mysql

Question

I am using mySQL and CodeIgniter. I have some floating point numbers in my database such as

• 8.3456
• 8.5555
• 4.5556

Answer 1

In my case, I was using the browsers geolocations and trying to find a closest city/state based on the coordinates I had in a table.

table structure:

id    zipcode    city_state   lat    lon
1     12345      Example, GA  85.3   -83.2

Recommend testing this vigorously before using -- probably needs some tweaks, but I came up with this as a start

SELECT city_state, 
   zipcode, 
   ( Abs( lat - -33.867886 ) 
     + Abs( lon - -63.987) ) AS distance
FROM   zipcodes 
ORDER  BY distance 
LIMIT  1;  

For laravel users:

$city = Zipcodes::selectRaw
    ('city_state, zipcode,  ( ABS( lat - ? ) + ABS( lon - ?) ) AS distance', [$lat, $lon])
        ->orderBy('distance')
        ->first();

echo $city->city_state

Hope this helps someone someday.