IP Based Image

PHP
1

Hi, i have a banner area on my website where i would like to display an image. I would like to display a different image in the banner area, depending on a users’ location.

I have 4 different images:

01 - usa_banner.jpg (default)
02 - europe_banner.jpg
03 - uk_banner.jpg
04 - australia_banner.jpg

If a user views the site from a country outside of the top 4 areas, then i would like to display the default usa_banner.jpg image.

I have created my site using codeigniter. What is the best way to work out the IP ranges etc. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance…

2

Hi there,

I would use a third party service to do this, such as http://www.hostip.info/

<?php
$country = '';
$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

if (!empty($ip)) {
  $country = file_get_contents('http://api.hostip.info/country.php?ip='.$ip);
}
?>

Then you can use a simple if else statement to do the rest.

HTH

3

Cool, thanks… how reliable are these 3rd party services…

4

I’ve no direct experience of this one, but a quick WHOIS look-up, shows that the domain has been registered since 2003.
That’s quite a good sign.

Saying that, if you don’t pay for it, you can’t be disappointed if it goes away at some point …

5

I recommend http://php.net/manual/en/book.geoip.php

6

Has anyone ever used MaxMind?