GeoIp¶ ↑

Retreive the geolocation of an IP address based on the ipinfodb.com webservice.

As of 8th November 2010, the service is asking that all users register for an API key.

Consider making a donation to ipinfodb.com at ipinfodb.com/donate.php

Usage¶ ↑

Set API key¶ ↑

GeoIp.api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"

This must be done before making the geolocation call.

Retrieve geolocation¶ ↑

GeoIp.geolocation(ip_address)

Example¶ ↑

# 209.85.227.104 = google.be (US)
GeoIp.geolocation('209.85.227.104')

returns:

{
  :status           =>"OK",
  :ip               =>"209.85.227.104"
  :country_code     =>"US",
  :country_name     =>"United States",
  :region_code      =>"06",
  :region_name      =>"California",
  :city             =>"Mountain View",
  :zip_postal_code  =>"94043",
  :latitude         =>"37.4192",
  :longitude        =>"-122.057"
}

Country only¶ ↑

There is an option to only retreive the country information and thus excluding the city details. This results in a faster response from the service since less queries need to be done.

GeoIp.geolocation('209.85.227.104', {:precision => :country})

returns:

{
  :status           => "OK",
  :ip               => "209.85.227.104"
  :country_code     => "US",
  :country_name     => "United States"
}

Timezone information¶ ↑

There is an option now to retrieve optional timezone information too:

GeoIp.geolocation('209.85.227.104', {:timezone => true})

returns:

{
  :status           =>"OK",
  :ip               =>"209.85.227.104"
  :country_code     =>"US",
  :country_name     =>"United States",
  :region_code      =>"06",
  :region_name      =>"California",
  :city             =>"Mountain View",
  :zip_postal_code  =>"94043",
  :latitude         =>"37.4192",
  :longitude        =>"-122.057"
  :timezone_name    =>"America/Los_Angeles",
  :utc_offset       =>-25200,
  :dst?             =>true
}

Obviously it is not possible to have the country precision enabled while retrieving the timezone information.

Getting it¶ ↑

GeoIp can be installed as a Ruby Gem:

gem install geo_ip

Alternatively, you can also install it as a Rails plugin:

./script/plugin install git://github.com/jeroenj/geo_ip.git

Testing¶ ↑

Set up your API key first for the test suite by creating a spec/api.yml file. Follow the example in spec/api.yml.example. Then run the tests with:

ruby spec/geo_ip_spec.rb

Note on Patches/Pull Requests¶ ↑

• Fork the project.

• Make your feature addition or bug fix.

• Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.

• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)

• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright¶ ↑

Copyright © 2010 Jeroen Jacobs, redstorm sprl. See LICENSE for details.