Description

Returns linear distance in meters between two lon/lat points given a particular spheroid. See the explanation of spheroids given for ST_Length_Spheroid.

	This function currently does not look at the SRID of a point geometry to determine spheroid and will always assume points are along the spheroid given.

Examples

SELECT round(CAST(
		ST_Distance_Spheroid(ST_Centroid(the_geom), ST_GeomFromText('POINT(-118 38)',4326), 'SPHEROID["WGS 84",6378137,298.257223563]')
			As numeric),2) As dist_meters_spheroid,
		round(CAST(ST_Distance_Sphere(ST_Centroid(the_geom), ST_GeomFromText('POINT(-118 38)',4326)) As numeric),2) As dist_meters_sphere,
round(CAST(ST_Distance(ST_Transform(ST_Centroid(the_geom),32611),
		ST_Transform(ST_GeomFromText('POINT(-118 38)', 4326),32611)) As numeric),2) As dist_utm11_meters
FROM
	(SELECT ST_GeomFromText('LINESTRING(-118.584 38.374,-118.583 38.5)', 4326) As the_geom) as foo;
 dist_meters_spheroid | dist_meters_sphere | dist_utm11_meters
----------------------+--------------------+-------------------
			 70454.92 |           70424.47 |          70438.00

	

See Also

ST_Distance, ST_Distance_Sphere