How to get visitor country in PHP

In this tutorial we demonstrate how to get a website visitor's country based on their IP address with PHP using an API call or a local database query.

Getting website visitor country through an API call

The easiest way to get a website visitor's country is through an API call, the only prerequisite is the API client class, see the PHP code example below :

<?php
// The free open source DB-IP API client is available on GitHub : https://github.com/dbip/api-client
require "dbip-client.class.php";

// Uncomment the line below and fill in your API key
//DBIP\APIKey::set("YOUR_API_KEY_GOES_HERE");

// Get IP address from the $_SERVER global array, catch forwarded address from proxies
if (isset($_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]) && $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]) {
	$ipAddress = $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"];
} else {
	$ipAddress = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"];
}

// Lookup IP address information
$addrInfo = DBIP\Address::lookup($ipAddress);

// Display results
echo "Visitor ISO-3166-alpha2 country code : {$addrInfo->countryCode}<br />";
echo "Visitor country name : {$addrInfo->countryName}<br />";

Local database query

In the code example below, we assume you are using the latest database query library and already imported a CSV database to a local MySQL or MariaDB instance :

<?php
// The free open source DB-IP query library is available at : https://db-ip.com/db/format/ip-to-location-isp/csv.html#howto
require "dbip.class.php";

// Connect to the database
$db = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=dbip", "mylogin", "mypassword");

// Alternatively connect to MySQL using the old interface
// Comment the PDO statement above and uncomment the mysql_ calls
// below if your PHP installation doesn't support PDO :
// $db = mysql_connect("localhost", "mylogin", "mypassword");
// mysql_select_db("dbip", $db);

// Instanciate a new DBIP object with the database connection
$dbip = new DBIP($db);

// Alternatively instanciate a DBIP_MySQL object
// Comment the new statement above and uncomment below if your PHP
// installation doesn't support PDO :
// $dbip = new DBIP_MySQL($db);

// Get IP address from the $_SERVER global array, catch forwarded address from proxies
if (isset($_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]) && $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]) {
	$ipAddress = $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"];
} else {
	$ipAddress = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"];
}

// Lookup IP address information in local database
$addrInfo = $dbip->lookup($ipAddress);

// Show the associated country
echo "Visitor ISO-3166-alpha2 country code : {$addrInfo->country}<br />";

Compatibility

API				DB
Free	Basic	Core	Extended	IP to Country	IP to City	IP to Location	IP to ISP	IP to Location+ISP

See also : Get visitor country with Javascript

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