Overview: To obtain the details like country, continent, city, etc of the visitor, first we need to get the IP of the visitor. The IP address can be obtained with the help of superglobal $_SERVER in PHP. Finally, with the use of API geoPlugin, we can obtain information about the IP address i.e. visitor of the website.
Step 1: Getting the visitor’s IP address.
$_SERVER is a PHP Superglobals variable which holds information about headers, IP, script details, etc. Elements like REMOTE_ADDR, HTTP_X_REAL_IP, HTTP_CLIENT_IP and HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR can be used to get the IP from this super global.
Example: This example obtain the IP of the visitors.
<?php // PHP code to extract IPÂ Â Â function getVisIpAddr() { Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â if (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'])) { Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â return $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP']; Â Â Â Â } Â Â Â Â else if (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'])) { Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â return $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']; Â Â Â Â } Â Â Â Â else { Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â return $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; Â Â Â Â } } Â Â // Store the IP address $vis_ip = getVisIPAddr(); Â Â // Display the IP address echo $vis_ip; Â Â Â ?> |
Note: In case of CloudFlare, one may need to use elements like HTTP_X_REAL_IP to obtain the IP address.
Step 2: Use API to get the details of the visitor’s IP: Here, we are going to use the geoPlugin API to get the details of the visitor. The api will deliver a json object, which can convert to a PHP variable.
<?php // PHP code to obtain country, city, // continent, etc using IP Address   $ip = '52.25.109.230';   // Use JSON encoded string and converts // it into a PHP variable $ipdat = @json_decode(file_get_contents(    echo 'Country Name: ' . $ipdat->geoplugin_countryName . "\n"; echo 'City Name: ' . $ipdat->geoplugin_city . "\n"; echo 'Continent Name: ' . $ipdat->geoplugin_continentName . "\n"; echo 'Latitude: ' . $ipdat->geoplugin_latitude . "\n"; echo 'Longitude: ' . $ipdat->geoplugin_longitude . "\n"; echo 'Currency Symbol: ' . $ipdat->geoplugin_currencySymbol . "\n"; echo 'Currency Code: ' . $ipdat->geoplugin_currencyCode . "\n"; echo 'Timezone: ' . $ipdat->geoplugin_timezone;    ?> |
Output:
Country Name: United States City Name: Boardman Continent Name: North America Latitude: 45.8491 Longitude: -119.7143 Currency Symbol: $ Currency Code: USD Timezone: America/Los_Angeles
