Finding points closest to latitude longitude point using PostGIS

Question

Right now I have a data base with PostGIS. Several of the data sets contain different locations at latitude longitude points. I will be doing several queries based at different latitude longitude points, I need to find the closest locations at each point as well as all the points within a certain number of meters. Right now I was just sorting all the data by closest to the lat/lon point that I was querying, so:

SELECT 
     rest.station_id
FROM 
     rest
ORDER BY rest.geom <-> ST_SetSRID(ST_MakePoint('%(lat)s',' (lon)s')::geometry, 4326)
LIMIT 1

where the lat lon variables are what I am querying.

Is there a way to do this better so that I don't have to sort each time I do a query?

Answer 1

Based on an example here, you could do something like this:

SELECT 
a.station_id,
ST_Distance(a.geom, 'POINT(your_lon your_lat)'::geography) dist 
FROM rest a 
WHERE ST_DWithin(a.geom, 'POINT(your_lon your_lat)'::geography, your_dist_in_meters)
ORDER BY a.geom <-> 'POINT(your_lon your_lat)'::geography;