How to store coordinates in MySQL

Many times we capture the geo-location of users and store in the database for different use cases.
I have seen that most of the developers use multiple fields to store the latitude and longitude separately like
Table_name(field1, field2, ..., latitude, longitude).

In this short article we will see an alternative way of storing coordinates in MySQL database using the spatial data types like POINT.

Create a table

• Let us create a table named locations.
• Field coordinates of data type POINT.

CREATE TABLE locations (
      id INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
      coordinates POINT,
      PRIMARY KEY (id)
);

Insertion of coordinates

• To insert/update the field coordinates, we need to prepare a string like this 'POINT(latitude longitude)'.
• Then we will use the in-built function called ST_GeomFromText to create a geometry in given SRID from WKT specification.
• Pass the prepared string of points into ST_GeomFromText function.

INSERT INTO 
     locations (coordinates) 
VALUES 
     (ST_GeomFromText('POINT(21.67890 91.54789)');

Table will store and display the data in the following way

id        coordinates
1         POINT(21.67890 91.54789)

Originally published on blog.bibekkakati.me

Also, check this out to know how to capture user's geo-location in web browser.

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