Given the below description and comments, we've repurposed this ticket into a request to improve the error message for $near. In particular, we would like the error to include information about how a $near predicate implies a sort of the data as well, which you may not want/need. If you don't want/need the sort part, there are workarounds available such as using $geoWithin predicates. These aren't easy workarounds, so we'll likely want to link to a docs page or something like that.

Original Description

Currently to perform a non-aggregation geo query one would use the $near operator. This operator is not allowed in aggregation pipeline, even as the first stage, and instead the aggregation pipeline requires a $geoNear stage.

The rejection of $near by the aggregation pipeline causes particular problems because the drivers presently implement the count operation as an aggregation pipeline. Applications run into a problem when:

• They issue a find
• In the find operation, they specify conditions which include $near
• They want to count the results

The driver in this case wraps the query into an aggregation pipeline which the server subsequently fails.

This was reported in https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/MONGOID-5096.