django, location based searches

Question

Excuse my ignorance, I am not even sure of the correct term for this. What I want to do is search by city and state or zip code in my django application and also include results within certain distances of the location (25, 50, 75 miles).

I am guessing you probably need to convert the city and state or zip code to lat and long and then search based on that. Is this correct or what is the best way to accomplish this in a django application? Does any one know of exiting apps that already do this, so I can look at the code?

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

You could use GeoDjango, which already includes these features. Otherwise you can do exactly as you said: geocode addresses to get latitude and longitude, then just do the math ;-)