Geo Bounding Box Filter

A filter allowing to filter hits based on a point location using a bounding box. Assuming the following indexed document:

{
    "pin" : {
        "location" : {
            "lat" : 40.12,
            "lon" : -71.34
        }
    }
}

Then the following simple query can be executed with a geo_bounding_box filter:

{
    "filtered" : {
        "query" : {
            "match_all" : {}
        },
        "filter" : {
            "geo_bounding_box" : {
                "pin.location" : {
                    "top_left" : {
                        "lat" : 40.73,
                        "lon" : -74.1
                    },
                    "bottom_right" : {
                        "lat" : 40.717,
                        "lon" : -73.99
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Accepted Formats

In much the same way the geo_point type can accept different representation of the geo point, the filter can accept it as well:

Lat Lon As Properties

{
    "filtered" : {
        "query" : {
            "match_all" : {}
        },
        "filter" : {
            "geo_bounding_box" : {
                "pin.location" : {
                    "top_left" : {
                        "lat" : 40.73,
                        "lon" : -74.1
                    },
                    "bottom_right" : {
                        "lat" : 40.717,
                        "lon" : -73.99
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Lat Lon As Array

Format in [lon, lat], note, the order of lon/lat here in order to conform with GeoJSON.

{
    "filtered" : {
        "query" : {
            "match_all" : {}
        },
        "filter" : {
            "geo_bounding_box" : {
                "pin.location" : {
                    "top_left" : [40.73, -74.1],
                    "bottom_right" : [40.717, -73.99]
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Lat Lon As String

Format in lat,lon.

{
    "filtered" : {
        "query" : {
            "match_all" : {}
        },
        "filter" : {
            "geo_bounding_box" : {
                "pin.location" : {
                    "top_left" : "40.73, -74.1",
                    "bottom_right" : "40.717, -73.99"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Geohash

{
    "filtered" : {
        "query" : {
            "match_all" : {}
        },
        "filter" : {
            "geo_bounding_box" : {
                "pin.location" : {
                    "top_left" : "drm3btev3e86",
                    "bottom_right" : "drm3btev3e86"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

geo_point Type

The filter requires the geo_point type to be set on the relevant field.

Multi Location Per Document

The filter can work with multiple locations / points per document. Once a single location / point matches the filter, the document will be included in the filter

Type

The type of the bounding box execution by default is set to memory, which means in memory checks if the doc falls within the bounding box range. In some cases, an indexed option will perform faster (but note that the geo_point type must have lat and lon indexed in this case). Note, when using the indexed option, multi locations per document field are not supported. Here is an example:

{
    "filtered" : {
        "query" : {
            "match_all" : {}
        },
        "filter" : {
            "geo_bounding_box" : {
                "pin.location" : {
                    "top_left" : {
                        "lat" : 40.73,
                        "lon" : -74.1
                    },
                    "bottom_right" : {
                        "lat" : 40.717,
                        "lon" : -73.99
                    }
                },
                "type" : "indexed"
            }
        }
    }
}

Caching

The result of the filter is not cached by default. The _cache can be set to true to cache the result of the filter. This is handy when the same bounding box parameters are used on several (many) other queries. Note, the process of caching the first execution is higher when caching (since it needs to satisfy different queries).