Geolocation with GeoIP

The GeoIP object is a ctypes wrapper for the MaxMind GeoIP C API. [1] This interface is a BSD-licensed alternative to the GPL-licensed Python GeoIP interface provided by MaxMind.

In order to perform IP-based geolocation, the GeoIP object requires the GeoIP C libary and either the GeoIP Country or City datasets in binary format (the CSV files will not work!). These datasets may be downloaded from MaxMind. Grab the GeoIP.dat.gz and GeoLiteCity.dat.gz and unzip them in a directory corresponding to what you set GEOIP_PATH with in your settings. See the example and reference below for more details.

Example

Assuming you have the GeoIP C library installed, here is an example of its usage:

>>> from django.contrib.gis.utils import GeoIP
>>> g = GeoIP()
>>> g.country('google.com')
{'country_code': 'US', 'country_name': 'United States'}
>>> g.city('72.14.207.99')
{'area_code': 650,
'city': 'Mountain View',
'country_code': 'US',
'country_code3': 'USA',
'country_name': 'United States',
'dma_code': 807,
'latitude': 37.419200897216797,
'longitude': -122.05740356445312,
'postal_code': '94043',
'region': 'CA'}
>>> g.lat_lon('salon.com')
(37.789798736572266, -122.39420318603516)
>>> g.lon_lat('uh.edu')
(-95.415199279785156, 29.77549934387207)
>>> g.geos('24.124.1.80').wkt
'POINT (-95.2087020874023438 39.0392990112304688)'

GeoIP Settings

GEOIP_PATH

A string specifying the directory where the GeoIP data files are located. This setting is required unless manually specified with path keyword when initializing the GeoIP object.

GEOIP_LIBRARY_PATH

A string specifying the location of the GeoIP C library. Typically, this setting is only used if the GeoIP C library is in a non-standard location (e.g., /home/sue/lib/libGeoIP.so).

GEOIP_COUNTRY

The basename to use for the GeoIP country data file. Defaults to 'GeoIP.dat'.

GEOIP_CITY

The basename to use for the GeoIP city data file. Defaults to 'GeoLiteCity.dat'.

GeoIP API

class GeoIP([path=None, cache=0, country=None, city=None])

The GeoIP object does not require any parameters to use the default settings. However, at the very least the GEOIP_PATH setting should be set with the path of the location of your GeoIP data sets. The following intialization keywords may be used to customize any of the defaults.

Keyword Arguments Description
path Base directory to where GeoIP data is located or the full path to where the city or country data files (.dat) are located. Assumes that both the city and country data sets are located in this directory; overrides the GEOIP_PATH settings attribute.
cache The cache settings when opening up the GeoIP datasets, and may be an integer in (0, 1, 2, 4) corresponding to the GEOIP_STANDARD, GEOIP_MEMORY_CACHE, GEOIP_CHECK_CACHE, and GEOIP_INDEX_CACHE GeoIPOptions C API settings, respectively. Defaults to 0 (GEOIP_STANDARD).
country The name of the GeoIP country data file. Defaults to GeoIP.dat. Setting this keyword overrides the GEOIP_COUNTRY settings attribute.
city The name of the GeoIP city data file. Defaults to GeoLiteCity.dat. Setting this keyword overrides the GEOIP_CITY settings attribute.

GeoIP Methods

Querying

All the following querying routines may take either a string IP address or a fully qualified domain name (FQDN). For example, both '24.124.1.80' and 'djangoproject.com' would be valid query parameters.

GeoIP.city(query)

Returns a dictionary of city information for the given query. Some of the values in the dictionary may be undefined (None).

GeoIPcountry(query)

Returns a dictionary with the country code and country for the given query.

GeoIP.country_code(query)

Returns only the country code corresponding to the query.

GeoIP.country_name(query)

Returns only the country name corresponding to the query.

Coordinate Retrieval

GeoIP.coords(query)

Returns a coordinate tuple of (longitude, latitude).

GeoIP.lon_lat(query)

Returns a coordinate tuple of (longitude, latitude).

GeoIP.lat_lon(query)

Returns a coordinate tuple of (latitude, longitude),

GeoIP.geos(query)

Returns a django.contrib.gis.geos.Point object corresponding to the query.

Database Information

GeoIP.country_info

This property returns information about the GeoIP country database.

GeoIP.city_info

This property returns information about the GeoIP city database.

GeoIP.info

This property returns information about all GeoIP databases (both city and country).

GeoIP-Python API compatibility methods

These methods exist to ease compatibility with any code using MaxMind's existing Python API.

classmethod GeoIP.open(path, cache)

This classmethod instantiates the GeoIP object from the given database path and given cache setting.

GeoIP.region_by_addr(query)
GeoIP.region_by_name(query)
GeoIP.record_by_addr(query)
GeoIP.record_by_name(query)
GeoIP.country_code_by_addr(query)
GeoIP.country_code_by_name(query)
GeoIP.country_name_by_addr(query)
GeoIP.country_name_by_name(query)

Footnotes

[1]GeoIP(R) is a registered trademark of MaxMind, LLC of Boston, Massachusetts.
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