IP Geocode using PHP echo

Question

I'm trying to display the users country (based on their IP) in a form input value.

Here's my code so far ..

<input style="display:block" type="text" name="country" id="country" value="<?php               
$pageContent = file_get_contents('http://freegeoip.net/json/echo $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']');
$parsedJson  = json_decode($pageContent);
echo $parsedJson->country_name; ?>" />

I'm using PHP JSON-decode to get the data from "http://freegeoip.net/json/(IP ADDRESS)".

That website geocodes the IP address and returns a country name.

What I want to do is to be able to substitute in a users IP address into that web address, which would then return the country name of the user. The best way I could think of was by using

<?php echo $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; ?>

but when I put it in I get a Server Error.

How would I go about doing this?

No offence, but please do a bit of studying on basic PHP syntax... — Marc B, May 29 '12 at 19:55
http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php and http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.string.php — webbiedave, May 29 '12 at 19:56

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited May 29 '12 at 20:08

$pageContent = file_get_contents('http://freegeoip.net/json/' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);

You can't use echo within a function. Instead, you should use the concatenating operator.

Also, better code would be something like this:

<?php               
$pageContent = file_get_contents('http://freegeoip.net/json/' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
$parsedJson  = json_decode($pageContent);
?>
<input style="display:block" type="text" name="country" id="country" value="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($parsedJson->country_name); ?>" />

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered May 29 '12 at 19:55

2

$pageContent = file_get_contents('http://freegeoip.net/json/' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);

No need to echo into a string parameter... just concatenate with ..

answered May 29 '12 at 19:55

Brad

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 30 '17 at 09:33

1

I've been needing the GeoIPservices myself in some project lately. I've created a ** PHP wrapper**, in case others are looking for a PHP helper for this.

Can be found at https://github.com/DaanDeSmedt/FreeGeoIp-PHP-Wrapper

answered Mar 30 '17 at 09:33

daan.desmedt

3,752
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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 19 '18 at 10:32

Since Freegeoip will became a paid service (https://ipstack.com/), if you want a free simple service you can use ip-api.com instead of freegeoip.net :

function getDataOfIp($ip) {
    try {
        $pageContent = file_get_contents('http://ip-api.com/json/' . $ip);
        $parsedJson  = json_decode($pageContent);
        return [
            "country_name" => $parsedJson->country,
            "country_code" => $parsedJson->countryCode,
            "time_zone" => $parsedJson->timezone
        ];
    } 
    catch (Exception $e) {
        return null;
    }
}

You should adapt return value by the data you need.

IP Geocode using PHP echo

4 Answers4