Redirect Web Visitors By Country Using PHP and MySQL

Why redirect web visitors based on country

There are times when it is useful to redirect a visitor to different default web page based on the visitor’s country of origin. One practical usage is to redirect visitor to web page with the language recognized by the visitor. This article shows you how to build up such a system using PHP (server-side scripting language) and MYSQL (IP address to country lookup database).

Let us take a simple case study. Company XYZ is multi-national company with major customers from United States and Japan. The company official website is developed in both English and Japanese languages. The default page is in English language and visitor can switch to Japanese by changing the default language option. There exists a potential risk when a Japanese visitor does not understand English and he could not navigate the web site.

How to redirect web visitors based on country

In this tutorial, we use the IP2Location™ IP-Country database to lookup country of origin from the visitor’s IP address.

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 'rn'
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.

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'];
    $country_name = $row['country_name'];
     
     
    // Free recordset and close database connection
    mysqli_free_result($result); 
    mysqli_close($link);
     
 
    // Redirect user to the correct page
    echo 'You will be redirected to ' . $country_code . ' page 

';
    exit;
 
    // 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 'rn'
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.

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
    $ipno = Dot2LongIPv6($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 <= 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'];
    $country_name = $row['country_name'];
 
    // Free recordset and close database connection
    mysqli_free_result($result); 
    mysqli_close($link);
 
    // Redirect user to the correct page
    echo 'You will be redirected to ' . $country_code . ' page 

';
    exit;
 
    // Function to convert IP address to IP number (IPv6)
    function Dot2LongIPv6 ($IPaddr) {
        $int = inet_pton($IPaddr);
        $bits = 15;
        $ipv6long = 0;
        while($bits >= 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;
    }
?>

Was this article helpful?

Yes No

Related Articles