# Calculating distance when retrieving a single doc

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-distance-when-retrieving-a-single-doc/35381>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [November 24, 2015, 5:39am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-distance-when-retrieving-a-single-doc/35381 "2015-11-24T05:39:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Gaurav\_Arora](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/gaurav_arora/32/1492_2.png) [@Gaurav\_Arora](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Gaurav_Arora)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 5:39am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-distance-when-retrieving-a-single-doc/35381/1 "2015-11-24T05:39:49Z")

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I have documents saved in my ES instance which contain coords. Retrieving the distance when performing searches is easy using `_geo_distance` sort and I am currently doing that but I would also like ES to calculate the distance when I retrieve a single document.

Is this possible to do? My primary reason for doing this is that I would not like to put the calculation logic in my code because ES already does this well.

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 8:39pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-distance-when-retrieving-a-single-doc/35381/2 "2015-11-24T20:39:23Z")

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The distance from what though?

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**Author:** ![Gaurav\_Arora](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/gaurav_arora/32/1492_2.png) [@Gaurav\_Arora](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Gaurav_Arora)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2015, 9:35am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-distance-when-retrieving-a-single-doc/35381/3 "2015-12-03T09:35:02Z")

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Apologies for the late reply. I will pass in the coords from where the distance is to be calculated.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 11:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/calculating-distance-when-retrieving-a-single-doc/35381/4 "2017-07-05T23:33:55Z")

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