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Detect Location by IP

Returns "City, State" if found otherwise the default set at the top.

function detect_city($ip) {

        $default = 'UNKNOWN';

        if (!is_string($ip) || strlen($ip) < 1 || $ip == '127.0.0.1' || $ip == 'localhost')
            $ip = '8.8.8.8';

        $curlopt_useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)';

        $url = 'http://ipinfodb.com/ip_locator.php?ip=' . urlencode($ip);
        $ch = curl_init();

        $curl_opt = array(
            CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION  => 1,
            CURLOPT_HEADER      => 0,
            CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER  => 1,
            CURLOPT_USERAGENT   => $curlopt_useragent,
            CURLOPT_URL       => $url,
            CURLOPT_TIMEOUT         => 1,
            CURLOPT_REFERER         => 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],
        );

        curl_setopt_array($ch, $curl_opt);

        $content = curl_exec($ch);

        if (!is_null($curl_info)) {
            $curl_info = curl_getinfo($ch);
        }

        curl_close($ch);

        if ( preg_match('{<li>City : ([^<]*)</li>}i', $content, $regs) )  {
            $city = $regs[1];
        }
        if ( preg_match('{<li>State/Province : ([^<]*)</li>}i', $content, $regs) )  {
            $state = $regs[1];
        }

        if( $city!='' && $state!='' ){
          $location = $city . ', ' . $state;
          return $location;
        }else{
          return $default;
        }

}

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  1. TeMc

    Note that this probably doesn’t scale very well as it’s depending on a third party service, and it depends on the html output from that service. Could break at any time and might slow down your page.

    (of course sanitize anything you get from here, assume nothing)

  2. Benjamin Knight

    Unfortunately the ipinfodb.com service isn’t terribly accurate… I’m in downtown San Francisco it thinks I’m in Santa Clara, CA. :(

  3. Catalin

    Hei.
    Could I know how to obtain information for how far the IP is located from me? Thanks.

  4. andrew

    would this help me to open a feature on a website to a determinate state???

  5. i am from kolkata, but it is showing that i am from mumbai !!

  6. Wonderful script and simple coding…. really effective.

    thanks…

  7. How can i turn this script into wordpress plugin?

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