Determine Web Visitors Country of Origin in the Drop Down List using PHP and MySQL Database

With the emergence of online technologies such as the Internet, people and businesses have increased their reliance and use of these mediums as an avenue for commerce as it can be more convenient. During the transaction online, there are times when it is important to preset the web visitor’s country of origin, ZIP code, ISP and domain name at the drop down list to prevent fraud and to ease the complexity of registration task. This article shows you how by using PHP and MYSQL Technology, it can be done.

Let us take a simple example of a user login from Canada and he needs to fill up a shopping cart. The form may be quite complex as some businesses need more information to prevent fraud. In this case, there are needs to preset certain info in the drop down list such as country of origin, ZIP code, ip and domain name of where the users login. As a result, the drop down list in this example will preset to Cananda, with the correct zip code and ip address.

In this tutorial, we use the IP2Location™ IP-Country database to lookup country of origin from the visitor’s IP address. Instead of loading the full database with 50000+ records, we could simplify this tutorial with assumption only two different IP address ranges in the world. IP addresses 0.0.0.0 – 126.255.255.255 originate from United States. Meanwhile, IP addresses 127.0.0.0 – 255.255.255.255 originate from Japan. Here we are creating a database “IP2Location” with table “ip_country” that consists of two IP address range records.

Below are the steps to set up the database for both IPv4 and IPv6 data and the sample codes.

Step 1: Create and connect to 'ip2location' database

CREATE DATABASE ip2location;
USE ip2location;

Step 2: Create 'ip_country' table

CREATE TABLE `ip_country`(
`ip_from` INT(10) UNSIGNED,
`ip_to` INT(10) UNSIGNED,
`country_code` CHAR(2),
`country_name` VARCHAR(64),
INDEX `idx_ip_from` (`ip_from`),
INDEX `idx_ip_to` (`ip_to`),
INDEX `idx_ip_from_to` (`ip_from`, `ip_to`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_bin;

Step 3. Import the IP2Location LITE IP-COUNTRY Database into table ‘ip_country’, you can get the Lite database at https://lite.ip2location.com/database/ip-country

LOAD DATA LOCAL
INFILE 'IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB1.CSV'
INTO TABLE  `ip_country`
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n'
IGNORE 0 LINES;

The full version of IP-Country database is available for subscription at $49/year from https://www.ip2location.com/databases/db1-ip-country. If you have the full version of IP2Location™ IP-Country database, the import process is easier by using the LOAD DATA feature available in MYSQL.

Step 4: Download country information at here. Create ip2location_country_information table:

CREATE TABLE `ip2location_country_information`(
`country_code` CHAR(2),
`capital` VARCHAR(50),
`total_area` DOUBLE,
`population` INT(10) UNSIGNED,
`idd_code` VARCHAR(5),
`currency_code` CHAR(3),
`currency_name` VARCHAR(50),
`lang_code` CHAR(2),
`lang_name` VARCHAR(50),
`cctld` CHAR(2),
INDEX `idx_country_code` (`country_code`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_bin;
 
LOAD DATA LOCAL
INFILE 'IP2LOCATION-COUNTRY-INFORMATION.CSV' INTO TABLE `ip2location_country_information`
CHARACTER SET latin1
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n' IGNORE 1 LINES;

Sample Code:

<?php
    // Replace this MYSQL server variables with actual configuration
    $mysql_server = "mysql_server.com";
    $mysql_user_name = "UserName";
    $mysql_user_pass = "Password";
 
    // Retrieve visitor IP address from server variable REMOTE_ADDR
    $ipaddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
 
    // Convert IP address to IP number for querying database
    $ipno = Dot2LongIP($ipaddress);
 
    // Connect to the database server
    $link = mysqli_connect($mysql_server, $mysql_user_name, $mysql_user_pass) or die("Could not connect to MySQL database");
 
    // Connect to the IP2Location database
    mysqli_select_db($link,"ip2location") or die("Could not select database");
 
    // SQL query string to match the recordset that the IP number fall between the valid range
    $query = "SELECT * FROM ip_country WHERE $ipno <= ip_to LIMIT 1";
     
     
    // Execute SQL query
    $result = mysqli_query($link,$query) or die("IP2Location Query Failed");
 
    // Retrieve the recordset (only one)
    $row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result);
 
    // Keep the country information into two different variables
    $country_code = $row['country_code'];
     
    // Free recordset and close database connection
    mysqli_free_result($result); 
    mysqli_close($link);
 
    // Function to convert IP address (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) to IP number (0 to 256^4-1)
    function Dot2LongIP ($IPaddr) {
     if ($IPaddr == "")
     {
       return 0;
     } else {
       $ips = explode(".", $IPaddr);
       return ($ips[3] + $ips[2] * 256 + $ips[1] * 256 * 256 + $ips[0] * 256 * 256 * 256);
     }
    }
     
?>

Step 1: Create and connect to 'ip2location' database

CREATE DATABASE ip2location;
USE ip2location;

Step 2: Create 'ip_country' table

CREATE TABLE `ip_country`(
`ip_from` DECIMAL(39,0) UNSIGNED,
`ip_to` DECIMAL(39,0) UNSIGNED,
`country_code` CHAR(2),
`country_name` VARCHAR(64),
INDEX `idx_ip_from` (`ip_from`),
INDEX `idx_ip_to` (`ip_to`),
INDEX `idx_ip_from_to` (`ip_from`, `ip_to`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_bin;

Step 3. Import the IP2Location LITE IP-COUNTRY IPV6 Database into table ‘ip_country’, you can get the Lite database at https://lite.ip2location.com/database/ip-country

LOAD DATA LOCAL
INFILE 'IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB1.IPV6.CSV'
INTO TABLE  `ip_country`
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n'
IGNORE 0 LINES;

Step 4: Download country information at here. Create ip2location_country_information table:

CREATE TABLE `ip2location_country_information`(
`country_code` CHAR(2),
`capital` VARCHAR(50),
`total_area` DOUBLE,
`population` INT(10) UNSIGNED,
`idd_code` VARCHAR(5),
`currency_code` CHAR(3),
`currency_name` VARCHAR(50),
`lang_code` CHAR(2),
`lang_name` VARCHAR(50),
`cctld` CHAR(2),
INDEX `idx_country_code` (`country_code`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_bin;
 
LOAD DATA LOCAL
INFILE 'IP2LOCATION-COUNTRY-INFORMATION.CSV' INTO TABLE `ip2location_country_information`
CHARACTER SET latin1
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n' IGNORE 1 LINES;

Sample Code:

<?php
    // Replace this MYSQL server variables with actual configuration
    $mysql_server = "mysql_server.com";
    $mysql_user_name = "UserName";
    $mysql_user_pass = "Password";
 
    // Retrieve visitor IP address from server variable REMOTE_ADDR
    $ipaddress = getenv(REMOTE_ADDR);
 
    // Convert IP address to IP number for querying database
    $ipno = Dot2LongIPv6($ipaddress);
     
    // Connect to the database server
    $link = mysqli_connect($mysql_server, $mysql_user_name, $mysql_user_pass) or die("Could not connect to MySQL database");
 
    // Connect to the IP2Location database
    mysqli_select_db($link,"ip2location") or die("Could not select database");
 
    // SQL query string to match the recordset that the IP number fall between the valid range
    $query = "SELECT * FROM ip_country WHERE $ipno = 0){
            $bin = sprintf("%08b", (ord($int[$bits])));
            if($ipv6long){
                $ipv6long = $bin . $ipv6long;
            }
            else{
                $ipv6long = $bin;
            }
            $bits--;
        }
        $ipv6long = gmp_strval(gmp_init($ipv6long, 2), 10);
        return $ipv6long;                   
    }
?>

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Determine Web Visitors Country of Origin in the Drop Down List using PHP and MySQL Database

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