The keyless, privacy-preserving geocoder behind Mitra's location field — and how to point it at your own Photon instance.
The entry editor’s location field autocompletes as you type. It works out of the box with no API key and no signup, powered by Photon — a free, open-source, OpenStreetMap-based geocoder built for search-as-you-type.
How it works
Section titled “How it works”- Suggestions combine recently used locations from your own entries with geocoder results from Photon.
- Queries are proxied through your own server — location keystrokes leave from the Mitra backend, never directly from the browser, so no user IPs are exposed to the geocoder.
- The UI language and (when granted) your position bias the results toward nearby, sensibly-labelled places.
- A picked suggestion just fills in a nicely formatted string; the location stays plain text, so you can always type anything freely.
By default Mitra queries komoot’s public Photon instance. Nothing needs configuring for this to work.
Self-hosting the geocoder
Section titled “Self-hosting the geocoder”If you’d rather not rely on komoot’s public instance — for privacy, for reliability, or to avoid its fair-use limits at scale — host Photon yourself and point Mitra at it:
environment: MITRA_PHOTON_URL: 'https://photon.internal.example.com'Mitra will query your instance instead. No frontend changes are needed — the swap is entirely server-side.
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”- No suggestions appear. The public Photon instance may be rate-limiting or briefly down; the field still accepts free text. Consider self-hosting Photon for a dependable experience.
- Results are in the wrong language or too street-level. Mitra forwards a supported UI language where it can and biases to a city-level zoom; exact-name matches elsewhere are still returned.