Getting the location from an IP address

Question

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.

Answer 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>