Identifying country by IP address
Solution 1:
No you can't - IP addresses get reallocated and reassigned from time to time, so the mapping of IP to location will also change over time.
If you want to find out the location that an IP address currently maps to you can either download a geolocation database, such as GeoLite from MaxMind, or use an API like http://ipinfo.io (my own service) which will also give you additional details:
$ 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": "California",
"country": "US",
"phone": 650
}
Solution 2:
I think what you're looking for is an IP Geolocation database or service provider. There are many out there and some are free (get what you pay for).
Although I haven't used this service before, it claims to be in real-time. https://kickfire.com/kf-api
Here's another IP geo location API from Abstract API - https://www.abstractapi.com/ip-geolocation-api
But just do a google search on IP geo and you'll get more results than you need.
Solution 3:
IP addresses are quite commonly used for geo-targeting i.e. customizing the content of a website by the visitor's location / country but they are not permanently associated with a country and often get re-assigned.
To accomplish what you want, you need to keep an up to date lookup to map an IP address to a country either with a database or a geolocation API. Here's an example :
> https://ipapi.co/8.8.8.8/country
US
> https://ipapi.co/8.8.8.8/country_name
United States
Or you can use the full API to get complete location for IP address e.g.
https://ipapi.co/8.8.8.8/json
{
"ip": "8.8.8.8",
"city": "Mountain View",
"region": "California",
"region_code": "CA",
"country": "US",
"country_name": "United States",
"continent_code": "NA",
"postal": "94035",
"latitude": 37.386,
"longitude": -122.0838,
"timezone": "America/Los_Angeles",
"utc_offset": "-0800",
"country_calling_code": "+1",
"currency": "USD",
"languages": "en-US,es-US,haw,fr",
"asn": "AS15169",
"org": "Google Inc."
}
Solution 4:
You could use ipdata.co to perform the lookup
This answer uses a 'test' API Key that is very limited and only meant for testing a few calls. Signup for your own Free API Key and get up to 1500 requests daily for development.
curl https://api.ipdata.co/23.221.76.66?api-key=test
Ipdata has 10 endpoints globally each able to handle >10,000 requests per second!
Gives
{
"ip": "23.221.76.66",
"city": "Cambridge",
"region": "Massachusetts",
"region_code": "MA",
"country_name": "United States",
"country_code": "US",
"continent_name": "North America",
"continent_code": "NA",
"latitude": 42.3626,
"longitude": -71.0843,
"asn": "AS20940",
"organisation": "Akamai International B.V.",
"postal": "02142",
"calling_code": "1",
"flag": "https://ipdata.co/flags/us.png",
"emoji_flag": "\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8",
"emoji_unicode": "U+1F1FA U+1F1F8",
"is_eu": false,
"languages": [
{
"name": "English",
"native": "English"
}
],
"currency": {
"name": "US Dollar",
"code": "USD",
"symbol": "$",
"native": "$",
"plural": "US dollars"
},
"time_zone": {
"name": "America/New_York",
"abbr": "EDT",
"offset": "-0400",
"is_dst": true,
"current_time": "2018-04-19T06:32:30.690963-04:00"
},
"threat": {
"is_tor": false,
"is_proxy": false,
"is_anonymous": false,
"is_known_attacker": false,
"is_known_abuser": false,
"is_threat": false,
"is_bogon": false
}
}⏎
Solution 5:
I know that it is a very old post but for the sake of the users who are landed here and looking for a solution, if you are using Cloudflare as your DNS then you can activate IP geolocation and get the value from the request header,
here is the code snippet in C# after you enable IP geolocation in Cloudflare through the network tab
var countryCode = HttpContext.Request.Headers.Get("cf-ipcountry"); // in older asp.net versions like webform use HttpContext.Current.Request. ...
var countryName = new RegionInfo(CountryCode)?.EnglishName;
you can simply map it to other programming languages, please take a look at the Cloudflare's documentation here
but if you are really insisting on using a 3rd party solution to have more precise information about the visitors using their IP here is a complete, ready to use implementation using C#:
the 3rd party I have used is https://ipstack.com, you can simply register for a free plan and get an access token to use for 10K API requests each month, I am using the JSON model to retrieve and like to convert all the info the API gives me, here we go:
The DTO:
using System;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
public partial class GeoLocationModel
{
[JsonProperty("ip")]
public string Ip { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("hostname")]
public string Hostname { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("type")]
public string Type { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("continent_code")]
public string ContinentCode { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("continent_name")]
public string ContinentName { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("country_code")]
public string CountryCode { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("country_name")]
public string CountryName { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("region_code")]
public string RegionCode { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("region_name")]
public string RegionName { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("city")]
public string City { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("zip")]
public long Zip { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("latitude")]
public double Latitude { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("longitude")]
public double Longitude { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("location")]
public Location Location { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("time_zone")]
public TimeZone TimeZone { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("currency")]
public Currency Currency { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("connection")]
public Connection Connection { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("security")]
public Security Security { get; set; }
}
public partial class Connection
{
[JsonProperty("asn")]
public long Asn { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("isp")]
public string Isp { get; set; }
}
public partial class Currency
{
[JsonProperty("code")]
public string Code { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("name")]
public string Name { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("plural")]
public string Plural { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("symbol")]
public string Symbol { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("symbol_native")]
public string SymbolNative { get; set; }
}
public partial class Location
{
[JsonProperty("geoname_id")]
public long GeonameId { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("capital")]
public string Capital { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("languages")]
public Language[] Languages { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("country_flag")]
public Uri CountryFlag { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("country_flag_emoji")]
public string CountryFlagEmoji { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("country_flag_emoji_unicode")]
public string CountryFlagEmojiUnicode { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("calling_code")]
public long CallingCode { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("is_eu")]
public bool IsEu { get; set; }
}
public partial class Language
{
[JsonProperty("code")]
public string Code { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("name")]
public string Name { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("native")]
public string Native { get; set; }
}
public partial class Security
{
[JsonProperty("is_proxy")]
public bool IsProxy { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("proxy_type")]
public object ProxyType { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("is_crawler")]
public bool IsCrawler { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("crawler_name")]
public object CrawlerName { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("crawler_type")]
public object CrawlerType { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("is_tor")]
public bool IsTor { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("threat_level")]
public string ThreatLevel { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("threat_types")]
public object ThreatTypes { get; set; }
}
public partial class TimeZone
{
[JsonProperty("id")]
public string Id { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("current_time")]
public DateTimeOffset CurrentTime { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("gmt_offset")]
public long GmtOffset { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("code")]
public string Code { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("is_daylight_saving")]
public bool IsDaylightSaving { get; set; }
}
The Helper:
using System.Configuration;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
public class GeoLocationHelper
{
public static async Task<GeoLocationModel> GetGeoLocationByIp(string ipAddress)
{
var request = WebRequest.Create(string.Format("http://api.ipstack.com/{0}?access_key={1}", ipAddress, ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ipStackAccessKey"]));
var response = await request.GetResponseAsync();
using (var stream = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
var jsonGeoData = await stream.ReadToEndAsync();
return Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<GeoLocationModel>(jsonGeoData);
}
}
}