geokdtree 1.2.2

Given a coordinate point, find a very close point given a set of coordinate points.

GeoKDTree

GeoKDTree

Ultra-fast nearest-neighbor lookup for latitude/longitude data

GeoKDTree is a lightweight, high-performance spatial indexing library for Python designed to find the nearest geographic coordinate from massive datasets in nanoseconds.

It wraps a highly optimized KD-Tree with a geographic interface, allowing you to work directly with (latitude, longitude) pairs. No projections, no external dependencies, and no heavy GIS stacks.

Documentation

• Docs: https://connor-makowski.github.io/geokdtree/geokdtree.html
• Git Repo: https://github.com/connor-makowski/geokdtree

Installation

pip install geokdtree

If you are having trouble building the C++ extension during the installation process, you can run:

pip install geokdtree --config-settings=cmake.define.SKIP_CPP_BUILD=ON

Getting Started

from geokdtree import GeoKDTree

example_points = [
    (34.0522, -118.2437),  # Los Angeles
    (40.7128, -74.0060),   # New York
    (37.7749, -122.4194),  # San Francisco
    (51.5074, -0.1278),    # London
    (48.8566, 2.3522),     # Paris
]

geo_kd_tree = GeoKDTree(points=example_points)

test_point = (47.6062, -122.3321)  # Seattle
# Find the index of the closest point in the original dataset
closest_idx = geo_kd_tree.closest_idx(test_point) #=> 2
# Find the closest point itself
closest_point = geo_kd_tree.closest_point(test_point) #=> (37.7749, -122.4194)

Why Use GeoKDTree?

GeoKDTree is designed to solve one focused problem extremely well:

Fast nearest-neighbor lookup for latitude/longitude data at scale.

It is worth noting that the closest point found may not be the true closest point, but should be very close for most practical applications. See KD-Tree limitations for more details.

Extremely Fast Lookups

Once constructed, nearest-neighbor queries consistently complete in tens of nanoseconds, even with very large datasets.

Typical benchmark results from the included tests:

Number of Points	Build Time	Query Time
1,000	~1.7 ms	~0.02 ms
10,000	~25 ms	~0.05 ms
100,000	~350 ms	~0.05 ms
1,000,000	~6.8 s	~0.07 ms

This makes GeoKDTree well-suited for:

• Real-time proximity queries
• Matching incoming coordinates against large reference datasets
• High-throughput geospatial APIs
• Pre-filtering before more expensive geospatial calculations

Exact timings depend on hardware, Python version, and data distribution. These values reflect typical results from the repository’s benchmarks.

Built for Geographic Coordinates

GeoKDTree works directly with (latitude, longitude) pairs.

You do not need to:

• Project coordinates into planar space
• Use heavyweight GIS libraries
• Maintain custom spatial indexing code

Just pass geographic coordinates and query.

Simple API, Minimal Overhead

GeoKDTree intentionally keeps the API small and focused.

• Build once from a list of coordinates
• Query nearest neighbors with a single method call
• Retrieve indices or points directly from your original dataset

There are no external C extensions or heavy dependencies, keeping installation and deployment simple.

Deterministic and Predictable Performance

• Tree construction scales at approximately O(n log n)
• Query performance scales at approximately O(log n)
• No probabilistic approximations
• No background indexing or caching

This predictability is valuable for production systems where latency and reproducibility matter.

Supported Features

See: https://connor-makowski.github.io/geokdtree/geokdtree.html

Contributing

Issues, feature requests, and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue to discuss changes or enhancements.

Development

Running Tests, Prettifying Code, and Updating Docs

Make sure Docker is installed and running on a Unix system (Linux, MacOS, WSL2).

• Create a docker container and drop into a shell

  • ./run.sh

• Run all tests (see ./utils/test.sh)

  • ./run.sh test

• Prettify the code (see ./utils/prettify.sh)

  • ./run.sh prettify

• Update the docs (see ./utils/docs.sh)

  • ./run.sh docs

• Note: You can and should modify the Dockerfile to test different python versions.