MySQL Stored procedure variables from SELECT statements

Corrected a few things and added an alternative select - delete as appropriate.

DELIMITER |

CREATE PROCEDURE getNearestCities
(
IN p_cityID INT -- should this be int unsigned ?
)
BEGIN

DECLARE cityLat FLOAT; -- should these be decimals ?
DECLARE cityLng FLOAT;

    -- method 1
    SELECT lat,lng into cityLat, cityLng FROM cities WHERE cities.cityID = p_cityID;

    SELECT 
     b.*, 
     HAVERSINE(cityLat,cityLng, b.lat, b.lng) AS dist 
    FROM 
     cities b 
    ORDER BY 
     dist 
    LIMIT 10;

    -- method 2
    SELECT   
      b.*, 
      HAVERSINE(a.lat, a.lng, b.lat, b.lng) AS dist
    FROM     
      cities AS a
    JOIN cities AS b on a.cityID = p_cityID
    ORDER BY 
      dist
    LIMIT 10;

END |

delimiter ;

You simply need to enclose your SELECT statements in parentheses to indicate that they are subqueries:

SET cityLat = (SELECT cities.lat FROM cities WHERE cities.id = cityID);

Alternatively, you can use MySQL's SELECT ... INTO syntax. One advantage of this approach is that both cityLat and cityLng can be assigned from a single table-access:

SELECT lat, lng INTO cityLat, cityLng FROM cities WHERE id = cityID;

However, the entire procedure can be replaced with a single self-joined SELECT statement:

SELECT   b.*, HAVERSINE(a.lat, a.lng, b.lat, b.lng) AS dist
FROM     cities AS a, cities AS b
WHERE    a.id = cityID
ORDER BY dist
LIMIT    10;