IP Address Geolocation XML API

The API returns the location of an IP address (country, region, city, zipcode, latitude, longitude) and the associated timezone in XML format. It can be used to query up to 25 IP in a single lookup. You can find below code samples with PHP, Javascript, Ruby, Python and ASP.

Usage

http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query.php?ip=74.125.45.100&timezone=false

http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query.php?ip=74.125.45.100&timezone=true

http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query2.php?ip=74.125.45.100,206.190.60.37&timezone=false

http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query2.php?ip=ebay.com,google.com&timezone=false

http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query_country.php?ip=74.125.45.100

API list

• If you only need the country name, avoid using the city precision API.
• If you do one IP request at a time, use ip_query.php instead of ip_query2.php
• If you don't need timezone data, set the timezone parameter to false (timezone=false) because it requires 2 additionnal queries on our side
• If you track your visitors, avoid querying our API for all your page views (you can store the geolocation in a cookie, see below for an example)

Data accuracy

Over 99.5% on a country level and around 80% on a city level for the US within a 25 mile radius. The database used for this API is compiled from the free Maxmind CSV database (Geolite City) and rearranged with many scripts.

You can try a few lookups with our IP locator.

Servers location and uptime

We have 3 servers. Two are are load balanced & highly available (ldirectord + heartbeat setup). They are located in Montreal, Canada and used for the primary domain (ipinfodb.com). We also have a third server located in Los Angeles, US (backup.ipinfodb.com or us.ipinfodb.com). It can be used as the first server you query but keep in mind that it's not redundant as our main server in case of hardware failure. Our goal is to have over 99.99% uptime on the main server. 100% uptime can be reached by adding a failover server (eg backup.ipinfodb.com) in your code.

PHP example

We wrote a PHP class for our API. It can handle single or multiple IP/domain requests. You can download it here. Here is an example using all the features of the class :

<?php
include('geolocation.class.php');
 
//Load the class (city precision)
$geolocation = new geolocation(true);
 
//Load the class (country precision)
//$geolocation = new geolocation(false);
 
//Uncomment this line to show timezone data
//$geolocation->showTimezone(true);
 
//Uncomment this line if your server is on IPInfoDB whitelist ( no 2 queries/second limit). See http://ipinfodb.com/donate.php
//$geolocation->setWhitelist(true);
 
//Uncomment if you wish to use the US (L.A.) server as the primary
//$geolocation->useUSServer();
 
//Query timeout (in seconds) before switching to backup server
$geolocation->setTimeout(2);
 
//Set some "good" IP
$geolocation->setIP("66.135.205.14");
$geolocation->setIP("209.191.93.53");
 
//Set some "bad" IP and use the validator
$geolocation->setIP("999.191.93.53", true);
$geolocation->setIP("this is a test", true);
 
//Set some "good" domains
$geolocation->setDomain("google.com");
$geolocation->setDomain("ipinfodb.com");
 
//Set some "bad" domains and use the validator
$geolocation->setDomain("google", true);
$geolocation->setDomain("ipinfodb", true);
 
//Get errors and locations
$locations = $geolocation->getGeoLocation();
$errors = $geolocation->getErrors();
 
//Getting the first result
echo "<p>\n";
echo "<strong>First result</strong><br />\n";
if (!empty($locations[0]) && is_array($locations[0])) {
  foreach ($locations[0] as $field => $val) {
    echo $field . ' : ' . $val . "<br />\n";  
  }
}
echo "</p>\n";
 
//A dump of all results
echo "<p>\n";
echo "<strong>Dump of all results</strong><br />\n";
if (is_array($locations)) {
  foreach ($locations as $location) {
    echo var_dump($location) . "<br /><br />\n";    
  }
}
echo "</p>\n";
 
//Show errors
echo "<p>\n";
echo "<strong>Dump of all errors</strong><br />\n";
if (!empty($errors) && is_array($errors)) {
  foreach ($errors as $error) {
    echo var_dump($error) . "<br /><br />\n";    
  }
} else {
  echo "No errors" . "<br />\n";
}
echo "</p>\n";

Putting the geolocation data in a cookie

<?php
include_once('geolocation.class.php');
 
//Set geolocation cookie
if(!$_COOKIE["geolocation"]){
  $geolocation = new geolocation(true);
  $geolocation->setTimeout(2);
  $geolocation->setIP(getenv('REMOTE_ADDR'));
  list($visitorGeolocation) = $geolocation->getGeoLocation();
  if ($visitorGeolocation['Status'] == 'OK') {
    $data = base64_encode(serialize($visitorGeolocation));
    setcookie("geolocation", $data, time()+3600*24*7); //set cookie for 1 week
  }
}else{
  $visitorGeolocation = unserialize(base64_decode($_COOKIE["geolocation"]));
}
 
var_dump($visitorGeolocation);

Other languages and modules

• Javascript examples
• Ruby example 1
• Ruby example 2
• Ruby example 3
• ASP example
• Python example
• Coldfusion example
• OSCommerce module
• Drupal module
• Wordpress module
• Joomla extension(free non commercial)
• eZ Publish CMS module

Accents encoding

Depending on the locales of your server, you might have trouble diplaying accent in country, region and city name. Using PHP, you might need to utf8_encode the answer from our API. For other languages, look at the documentation how to encode in UTF-8.

Query limit

We do not have a specific daily limit but queries that are at a rate faster than 2 per second will be put in "queue". If you stay below 2 queries/second everything will be normal. If you go over the limit, you will still get an answer for all queries but they will be slowed down to about 1 per second. This should not affect most users but for high volume websites, you can either use our IP database on your server or we can whitelist your IP for 5$/month (simply use the donate form and leave a comment with your server IP). Good programming practices such as not querying our API for all page views (you can store the data in a cookie or a database) will also help not reaching the limit.

API source code

You can find the code of the APIs on this page

Keeping in touch for updates

The best way to get updates and news is with our RSS feed or on Twitter

Support

For all non googable questions, visit the forum. We also offer custom integration.