Getting the location from an IP address [closed]

I want to retrieve information like the city, state, and country of a visitor from their IP address, so that I can customize my web page according to their location. Is there a good and reliable way to do this in PHP? I am using JavaScript for client-side scripting, PHP for server-side scripting, and MySQL for the database.

Solution 1:

You could download a free GeoIP database and lookup the IP address locally, or you could use a third party service and perform a remote lookup. This is the simpler option, as it requires no setup, but it does introduce additional latency.

One third party service you could use is mine, http://ipinfo.io. They provide hostname, geolocation, network owner and additional information, eg:

$ curl ipinfo.io/8.8.8.8
{
  "ip": "8.8.8.8",
  "hostname": "google-public-dns-a.google.com",
  "loc": "37.385999999999996,-122.0838",
  "org": "AS15169 Google Inc.",
  "city": "Mountain View",
  "region": "CA",
  "country": "US",
  "phone": 650
}

Here's a PHP example:

$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$details = json_decode(file_get_contents("http://ipinfo.io/{$ip}/json"));
echo $details->city; // -> "Mountain View"

You can also use it client-side. Here's a simple jQuery example:

$.get("https://ipinfo.io/json", function (response) {
    $("#ip").html("IP: " + response.ip);
    $("#address").html("Location: " + response.city + ", " + response.region);
    $("#details").html(JSON.stringify(response, null, 4));
}, "jsonp");

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<h3>Client side IP geolocation using <a href="http://ipinfo.io">ipinfo.io</a></h3>

<hr/>
<div id="ip"></div>
<div id="address"></div>
<hr/>Full response: <pre id="details"></pre>

Solution 2:

Thought I'd post as nobody seems to have given info on this particular API, but its returning exactly what I'm after and you can get it to return in multiple formats, json, xml and csv.

 $location = file_get_contents('http://freegeoip.net/json/'.$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
 print_r($location);

This will give you all of the things you could possibly want:

{
      "ip": "77.99.179.98",
      "country_code": "GB",
      "country_name": "United Kingdom",
      "region_code": "H9",
      "region_name": "London, City of",
      "city": "London",
      "zipcode": "",
      "latitude": 51.5142,
      "longitude": -0.0931,
      "metro_code": "",
      "areacode": ""

}

Solution 3:

A pure Javascript example, using the services of https://geolocation-db.com They provide a JSON and JSONP-callback solution.

JSON: https://geolocation-db.com/json
JSONP-callback: https://geolocation-db.com/jsonp

No jQuery required!

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Geo City Locator by geolocation-db.com</title>
</head>
<body>
    <div>Country: <span id="country"></span></div>
    <div>State: <span id="state"></span></div>
    <div>City: <span id="city"></span></div>
    <div>Postal: <span id="postal"></span></div>
    <div>Latitude: <span id="latitude"></span></div>
    <div>Longitude: <span id="longitude"></span></div>
    <div>IP address: <span id="ipv4"></span></div>                             
</body>
<script>

    var country = document.getElementById('country');
    var state = document.getElementById('state');
    var city = document.getElementById('city');
    var postal = document.getElementById('postal');
    var latitude = document.getElementById('latitude');
    var longitude = document.getElementById('longitude');
    var ip = document.getElementById('ipv4');

    function callback(data)
    {
        country.innerHTML = data.country_name;
        state.innerHTML = data.state;
        city.innerHTML = data.city;
        postal.innerHTML = data.postal;
        latitude.innerHTML = data.latitude;
        longitude.innerHTML = data.longitude;
        ip.innerHTML = data.IPv4;
    }

    var script = document.createElement('script');
    script.type = 'text/javascript';
    script.src = 'https://geoilocation-db.com/json/geoip.php?jsonp=callback';
    var h = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
    h.parentNode.insertBefore(script, h);

</script> 
</html>

Solution 4:

Using Google APIS:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script>
contry_code = google.loader.ClientLocation.address.country_code
city = google.loader.ClientLocation.address.city
region = google.loader.ClientLocation.address.region
</script>

Solution 5:

You need to use an external service... such as http://www.hostip.info/ if you google search for "geo-ip" you can get more results.

The Host-IP API is HTTP based so you can use it either in PHP or JavaScript depending on your needs.