Google IP Geolocation API

Question

Is there any way to use any of the Google APIs to get the IP Geolocation of my User in Live time?

I think it will use the Analytics Database and that is the only one, that tracks my user at city level that actually is correct (Any other IP-Location-API that I could test shows my IP address nearly 200km away from my real location. Google shows it 200m(!) away!)

I want to know the Location of my User (At Browser side and transmit it to my Server or at Server side) to serve City dependent content. But I don't want to get my users one of these annoying pop ups asking for using GPS, so I want to use the IP address.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If you don't want to use HTML5 style client-enabled GeoIP information, you are going to need a GeoIP database like MaxMind's GeoIP Lite database, which is free and works well for 99% of use cases. Any other service with more accurate/detailed information is going to cost you a lot of money. MaxMind is praises by many people and works well for my needs, personally. It can give you Country/Region/City/Latitude-Longitude-Coordinates/Continent information.

Answer 2

You can use Google's geocoding API to get a real address for a location but the inputs required for that API are the latitude and longitude coordinates.

Example: http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=43.473,-82.533&sensor=false

You need to find and IP to Location API from some other vendor to get to a city level or keep the option to prompt them to grant you access for their geolocation.

IPInfoDB does a pretty good job at automatically narrowing down the location via IP without use input:

http://ipinfodb.com/ip_location_api.php

Answer 3

You can use Google's geolocation API to get the lat and lon based on the user's IP address:

  function findLatLonFromIP() {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      $.ajax({
        url: `https://www.googleapis.com/geolocation/v1/geolocate?key=${friendlyPix.IpFilter.apiKey}`,
        type: 'POST',
        data: JSON.stringify({considerIp: true}),
        contentType: 'application/json; charset=utf-8',
        dataType: 'json',
        success: (data) => {
          if (data && data.location) {
            resolve({lat: data.location.lat, lng: data.location.lng});
          } else {
            reject('No location object in geolocate API response.');
          }
        },
        error: (err) => {
          reject(err);
        },
      });
    });
  }

Then you can use these coordinates to get the address of the user using the geocoding API. Here is an example that returns the country:

  function getCountryCodeFromLatLng(lat, lng) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      $.ajax({
        url: `https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=${lat},${lng}&key=${friendlyPix.IpFilter.apiKey}`,
        type: 'GET',
        data: JSON.stringify({considerIp: true}),
        dataType: 'json',
        success: (data) => {
          console.log('reverse geocode:', data.results[0].address_components);
          data.results.some((address) => {
            address.address_components.some((component) => {
              if (component.types.includes('country')) {
                return resolve(component.short_name);
              }
            });
          });
          reject('Country not found in location information.');
        },
        error: (err) => {
          reject(err);
        },
      });
    });
  }

Above, just look through the data.results to find the information you need (City, Street, Country etc...) Use these two functions above together:

findLatLonFromIP().then((latlng) => {
  return getCountryCodeFromLatLng(latlng.lat, latlng.lng);
}).then((countryCode) => {
  console.log('User\'s country Code:', countryCode);
});