geolocation without requesting permission

Question

Ive noticed that modern html5 based geolocation always asks the user "do you want to share your location with this website?". Which is fine, but I know there are other routes of trying to determine a ballpark geolocation without having to request this permission. If I recall, these services uses ip databases to try to track geolocaiton info and provide it to a web app.

So, in my website I would like to get a "best guess" at the user's zip code, without the geolocation permission being requested. What's the simplest and/or best method of doing this?

Answer 1

IP geolocation is less accurate, but you don't need user permission for it. The http://ipinfo.io API (which is my service) makes it extremely simple. Here's a jQuery example:

$.get("http://ipinfo.io", function(response) {
    console.log(response.city, response.region, response.country);
}, "jsonp");

More details are available here.