PostGIS via GeoDjango: function ST_DistanceSphere(geometry, geometry) does not exist

Question

I've been using PostGIS via GeoDjango (Django v3.0.7), happily until just now. I have a query (Django .filter()) that looks like this:

.filter(point__distance_lte=(dlPt, D(m=CloseRadius)))

when it invokes the PostgreSQL query I get this error:

django.db.utils.ProgrammingError: function ST_DistanceSphere(geometry, geometry) does not exist

dlPt is indeed a Point, <class 'django.contrib.gis.geos.point.Point'>, and so are the point attributes in the objects being searched.

Any ideas what the issue might be?

Answer 1

Function st_distancesphere is avaialble for PostGIS version 2.2 and greater. So make sure that while using PostGIS with Geodjango it has a version that is greater then 2.2, otherwise it won't be able to find it in the database.

https://postgis.net/docs/ST_DistanceSphere.html

And you can check your PostGIS version by using this query

SELECT PostGIS_Version();