Filter zipcodes by proximity in Django with the Spherical Law of Cosines
I'm trying to handle proximity search for a basic store locater in Django. Rather than haul PostGIS around with my app just so I can use GeoDjango's distance filter, I'd like to use the Spherical Law of Cosines distance formula in a model query. I'd like all of the calculations to be done in the database in one query, for efficiency. An example MySQL query from The Internet implementing the Spherical Law of Cosines like this: SELECT id, ( 3959 * acos( cos( radians(37) ) * cos( radians( lat ) ) * cos( radians( lng ) - radians(-122) ) + sin( radians(37) ) * sin( radians( lat ) ) ) ) AS distance