Using IP tracking to serve up ads

[MikoMak]

Hi all,

I've got a site where I'd like to serve up ads based on the user's geographic location.

I'll use $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];  to detect the IP but how then do I use it, e.g. is there a database of IP to country mappings so I can extract the location and do the necessary?

Any help would be greatly apprciated.

Thanx,
MikoMak.

p.s. Nice new look to the forum.

[zq29]

You'd need to sign up to a Geolocation (or GeoIP) service, Googling "GeoIP" brings up a few companies that offer this service. It's generally a paid service though. You'd either be provided with a database, or access to a webservice.

[MikoMak]

Thanks for that Semi - will look it up.

MikoMak

[onlyican]

I like the word FREE

http://ip2more.com/docs/
http://www.ip2phrase.com/

Also note, for getting an IP address, evan behind a proxy use

$ip = isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']) ? $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] : $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

[MikoMak]

Thanx for that onlyican - that class looks really interesting, lots of built in features.

I had a quick look at the free country db available from http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_country with a tutorial on how to get it going here - http://www.delau.net/php/geoip.html