Country detection in Laravel applications

The ability to gather and analyze data about users' geographical locations has become increasingly vital for numerous applications. Whether it's personalizing content, tailoring marketing strategies, or implementing region-specific features, having accurate geolocation information can significantly enhance the user experience. To facilitate this process, GeoDetect package detects the country associated with an IP address.

GeoDetect allows to effortlessly extract valuable country information from IP addresses. Powered by a robust and up-to-date IP geolocation database, the package provides accurate results and ensures reliable performance. By Integrating GeoDetect into your Laravel applications you can easily implement geolocation functionality without the hassle of building and maintaining your own IP geolocation database.

Installation

To install the package, execute the following composer command:

composer require hibit-dev/geodetect

Usage

Once installed, include the GeoDetect package in your class:

use Hibit\\GeoDetect;

Instantiate the class or use dependency injection:

$geoDetect = new GeoDetect();

Retrieve country record providing user's IP address:

$country = $geoDetect->getCountry('XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX');

Finally, use available helpers to retrieve the required country information:

$country->getGeonameId();
$country->getIsoCode();
$country->getName();
$country->isInEuropeanUnion();

Self-hosted database

The package utilizes MaxMind's database in the background, which is regularly updated to ensure the accuracy of the data. However, you also have the option to use a self-hosted database by specifying the location of the DB file:

$country = $geoDetect->setCountriesDatabase('location_to_db_file')
                     ->getCountry('XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX');

Printing user flag

The GeoDetect package offers the capability to easily display a user's flag. Simply create an image HTML tag and insert the corresponding source for the image based on the country's ISO2 code:

<img alt="Country: FR" src="{{Hibit\\GeoDetect::getFlagByIsoCode('FR')}}">

By default, the resulting flag will have a height of 20px and a width that typically varies around 30px.

Sizes can be adjusted and even replaced with an SVG image if needed. To alter the format, the getFlagByIsoCode method requires a second parameter to be provided:

use Hibit\\Flag\\Format;

Hibit\\GeoDetect::getFlagByIsoCode('FR', Format::SVG) // SVG format
Hibit\\GeoDetect::getFlagByIsoCode('FR', Format::H20) // Height: 20px Width: ~30px
Hibit\\GeoDetect::getFlagByIsoCode('FR', Format::H24) // Height: 24px Width: ~36px
Hibit\\GeoDetect::getFlagByIsoCode('FR', Format::W20) // Width: 20px Height: ~13px
Hibit\\GeoDetect::getFlagByIsoCode('FR', Format::W40) // Width: 40px Height: ~26px

Note: FR was used for illustrative purposes; obtain the country code through the getIsoCode method of the country record. Alternatively, use the 2-character ISO code of the country if it's already available from another source.

Implementation in Laravel

To facilitate testing, we will create a new route within our Laravel application. In the routes/web.php file, a new route called get-country has been added. When this route is accessed, it will return all the available information in JSON format.

Route::get('/get-country', function (Illuminate\\Http\\Request $request) {
    $geoDetect = new Hibit\\GeoDetect();

    $country = $geoDetect->getCountry($request->getClientIp());

    return response()->json([
        'geonameId' => $country->getGeonameId(),
        'isoCode' => $country->getIsoCode(),
        'name' => $country->getName(),
        'isInEuropeanUnion' => $country->isInEuropeanUnion(),
    ]);
});

Please note that when testing the country detection functionality locally, it may not work as expected. This is because the client IP address in the request instance is typically set to localhost (127.0.0.1). Keep this in mind while testing the country detection feature on your local development environment.

Country name translations

The package comes with configured discovery option to enable Laravel to automatically identify and publish the necessary translations. You can find the translations in the /lang/en/geodetect.php file, and feel free to make any modifications to the translations as needed. If the files are not present, please manually publish them by executing the following command:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=hibit-geodetect

Once the translations have been published, you can use them to display the country name in any blade file using the translation directive:

@lang('geodetect.ES') //Output: Spain

Alternatively, the following syntax can be used outside the blades:

__('geodetect.ES') //Output: Spain

Conclusion

GeoDetect is simple but yet powerful PHP package for IP-based country detection. Its seamless integration, accurate results, and efficient performance make it an invaluable tool for developers working on projects that require geolocation functionality. By incorporating country detection into Laravel applications, developers can enhance user experiences and ensure the delivery of region-specific content, ultimately making their applications more inclusive and globally accessible.

Credits

Official GitHub: https://github.com/hibit-dev/geodetect