Not having _geo in displayedAttributes to return _geoDistance

[suarezlifestyle]

Hi, there's another similar post from about a year ago but I wasn't able to find any solution and I think it wasn't addressed.
I really want to use meilisearch as the search engine for my app, however I need some places locations to stay private but still showing the distance between the users and those. If any user enters the client side network requests will be able to see the lat and lng geo points, is there any workaround to have the _geoDistance value returned for each document but not the _geo fields?

[macraig]

Hi @suarezlifestyle ,

Thank you for sharing your use case. Unfortunately, there isn't a current workaround that hides the _geo fields while still returning the _geoDistance value.

However, we're considering this scenario for future updates. One possible solution we're exploring is introducing a rule-based syntax for displayedAttributes. With this new syntax, you could control whether _geoDistance is displayed without exposing _geo.

Here’s a rough proposal of how it might look:

  {
    "display": "always",
    "attributePatterns": ["_geoDistance"]
  },
  {
    "display": "never",
    "attributePatterns": ["_geo"]
  },
  {
    "display": "always",
    "attributePatterns": ["*"]
  }
]

Would this approach fit your needs? Let us know your thoughts!

[suarezlifestyle]

Yes, if you can control whether or not expose geo while still getting geoDistance back it's indeed a good approach