Get the longitude and latitude as user's machine in PHP

Question

How can I get the longitude and latitude using PHP of the user's machine?

I need the it to be so the longitude if north is a positive value and if south it is a negative value/

And in terms of latitude, if east it is positive value and if west it is a negative value.

How can I do this?

latitude and longitude pretty much comes in a given format, if you want something else, you'll have to figure that out for yourself. — adeneo, May 05 '13 at 01:33
@mario I didn't attend for it to be a duplicate. But I will look at that for help. — Irfan Mir, May 05 '13 at 01:40
@adeneo the only reason I want it in that format is to pass it to php's functions to get the sunset and sunrise. They require the longitude and latitude to be in that form. — Irfan Mir, May 05 '13 at 01:41

adeneo · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-15T11:04:24.727

17

The only way to geolocate on the serverside would be to use a lookup table for the IP adress. There are services that provide this for you, so you could do this :

$ip  = !empty($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']) ? $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] : $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$url = "http://freegeoip.net/json/$ip";
$ch  = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 5);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

if ($data) {
    $location = json_decode($data);

    $lat = $location->latitude;
    $lon = $location->longitude;

    $sun_info = date_sun_info(time(), $lat, $lon);
    print_r($sun_info);
}

It won't always be very accurate though. In javascript you would have access to the HTML5 Geolocation API, or Google Maps, but reverse geocoding with Google requires you to use a map, as per the TOS.

NOTE (2019): The service used in the example, FreeGeoIP has shut down, I'll leave the answer for posterity, as there are surely other services offering the same service.

edited Jul 15 '19 at 11:04

answered May 05 '13 at 01:30

adeneo

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I don't want to look up to location on the server side, I want to use PHP to look up the location on the client's side. – Irfan Mir May 05 '13 at 01:33
4

There is no PHP on the clientside, it's a serverside language ? – adeneo May 05 '13 at 01:34
True, the so I can't use PHP to look up sunset and sunrise on the client's side. I have to use a client side language, right? – Irfan Mir May 05 '13 at 01:44
@IrfanMir - why don't you start by trying my answer, and see if that works ? – adeneo May 05 '13 at 01:48
Because that only works on the server side. I don't want the the location of the server. I want the location of the user. – Irfan Mir May 05 '13 at 01:57
1

This gets the location of the user? Unless you're running on a local computer, in which case it gets the location of 127.0.0.1, which would'nt work. – adeneo May 05 '13 at 02:00
oh, okay. thank you. I apologise for any confusion. – Irfan Mir May 05 '13 at 02:05
The freegeoip API endpoint is no longer available. It has now been shut down – webchun Jul 06 '19 at 23:47

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

0

Please refer to the Google Maps API Geocoder: http://lab.abhinayrathore.com/ipmapper/

That will answer all of your questions from A-Z. If you are having trouble putting it to use check out where this question has been asked and answered: Find Latitude & Longitude of a given IP Address using IPMapper

This will be done using Javascript and not PHP

edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

Community

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answered May 05 '13 at 01:30

Jordan.J.D

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 05 '13 at 01:30

0

Because exact location requires user consent, it cannot be done with PHP. Try using JS to get the user's location and use AJAX to send it to the server.

If you are willing to use an approximate location, you can map by IP address. A web search will bring up a few options for that, such as this one.

answered May 05 '13 at 01:30

Mooseman

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HTML5 geoloaction is nothing more than the browser sending a request to a service based on IP and a few other variables, like nearby celltowers, GPS on mobile devices, network keys on close wireless networks etc, so it's not really exact either, and some of the services, especially Microsoft's is even worse than using a free service for looking up the IP. – adeneo May 05 '13 at 01:38

Get the longitude and latitude as user's machine in PHP

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