Getting country , city name from IP address in PHP
Posted on July 17, 2008
Filed Under how-to, php, tips and technique, web services
Yesterday, miaki asked me how can we get the country name from the IP address in PHP. Today, I’ve come up with the answer of this question. I’ve used the API from hostip.info to fetch the country name , city name and country code from the given IP address. I’ve mad this function in PHP which uses XML response from hostip.info and extracted country name, city name and country code using regular expression.
Function to return country, city name from IP address in PHP
function countryCityFromIP($ipAddr)
{
//function to find country and city from IP address
//Developed by Roshan Bhattarai http://roshanbh.com.np
//verify the IP address for the
ip2long($ipAddr)== -1 || ip2long($ipAddr) === false ? trigger_error("Invalid IP", E_USER_ERROR) : "";
$ipDetail=array(); //initialize a blank array
//get the XML result from hostip.info
$xml = file_get_contents("http://api.hostip.info/?ip=".$ipAddr);
//get the city name inside the node <gml:name> and </gml:name>
preg_match("@<Hostip>(\s)*<gml:name>(.*?)</gml:name>@si",$xml,$match);
//assing the city name to the array
$ipDetail['city']=$match[2];
//get the country name inside the node <countryName> and </countryName>
preg_match("@<countryName>(.*?)</countryName>@si",$xml,$matches);
//assign the country name to the $ipDetail array
$ipDetail['country']=$matches[1];
//get the country name inside the node <countryName> and </countryName>
preg_match("@<countryAbbrev>(.*?)</countryAbbrev>@si",$xml,$cc_match);
$ipDetail['country_code']=$cc_match[1]; //assing the country code to array
//return the array containing city, country and country code
return $ipDetail;
}
As you can see, I’ve documented all the PHP code and I don’t think I need explain anymore about that code. Just notice that, this function returns the array containg three key elements “country” , “city” and “country_code”. Each elements have the value of city, country and country code.
Now, look the the how we can use the above function in PHP,
$IPDetail=countryCityFromIP('12.215.42.19');
echo $IPDetail['country']; //country of that IP address
echo $IPDetail['city']; //outputs the IP detail of the city
Notice that the above PHP function returns the array containing the country , city and country code from IP Address and we can use them in PHP. If you want to know how to get IP address in PHP, you can check this post how you can get real IP address in PHP.
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Comments
18 Responses to “Getting country , city name from IP address in PHP”
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Yeha…..you can get some more of this on http://subesh.com.np/2008/07/mapping-the-ip-address-to-latitude-and-longitude-in-google-maps/
http://hido.net/ip2country.txt
http://hido.net/ip2country.phps
@brsyuksel …thanks for sharing that with us…
This one is better
http://www.maxmind.com/download/geoip/api/php/
I wrote a script a while back using the html that hostip returned, thanks for the easy read on an xml version. For those that find hostip.info returns inaccurate info, I suggest http://maxmind.com as an very accurate but pay alternative.
@Krasimir - You’ve to pay some bucks to maxmind for more accurate information retrieval
This /isn’t/ using php to derive country names. This is only a method of parsing xml using php for a site that may or may not be operational tomorrow. I’d see this as a fairly temporary solution, at best.
@someone - yes this a only method to consume the web services using PHP and this is the best free option you can get in internet to find the city and country from IP using PHP.
For reliability you can purchase the expensive database and use it in your application.
Our college IP in Pokhara is 202.79.63.59
When I run this script using this IP, it shows Hydrabad, India…..
College get the internet from wlink, pokhara center.
Why is it so?
ya seems that their API is returning wrong value for this ip address 202.79.63.59. Hostip.info is returning Hydarabad, India but when I checked the same from ip2location.com it is showing it is from Nepal.
http://www.ip2location.com/202.79.63.59
I have done some this and that to show country , browser info and OS ( plugins ) in comment list .this one is good too
Yeah the problem with this approach is that the API looks up the location of the company that owns the netblock, or so it seems.
The city/province returned when I look up my cable modem is the city/province where my ISP is headquartered (and that’s not where I am, it’s in a different province elsewhere in the country).
Not super useful.
It’s not the fault of their API if you’re sending wrong IP address. $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] always returns the IP address of proxy server not the IP address of the computer.
You better have to get the HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR and HTTP_CLIENT_IP header values…
hope this helps
this is a nice find and script. the inaccuracy may be also caused because their database can be a bit old…
Hello it was a great article and i like your blog! keep up the good work…
Hi, i’m programing dating site and this is cool working script. Combined with get real ip - amazing. Great job. Thank you!!!
Hi,
Ok, we found the details about ip address, can any help me to know about the mechine(computer name) name using ip
for this you can use gethostbyaddr() function of PHP