Where am I? - Get country

user_415347 0
Viewed 128468

An android mobile actually does know quite well where it is - but is there a way of retrieving the country by something like a country code?

No need of knowing the exact GPS position - the country is sufficient

I first thought of using the time zone, but actually I need more information than that since it makes a difference if the location is New York or Lima.

The background of the question: I have an application that uses temperature values, and I'd like to set the default unit either to Celsius or Fahrenheit, depending on whether the location is US or outside

geolocation android
10 Answers

For some devices, if the default language is set different (an indian can set English (US)) then 

context.getResources().getConfiguration().locale.getDisplayCountry();

will give wrong value .So this method is non reliable

Also, getNetworkCountryIso() method of TelephonyManager will not work on devices which don't have SIM card (WIFI tablets).

If a device doesn't have SIM then we can use Time Zone to get the country. For countries like India, this method will work

sample code used to check the country is India or not (Time zone id : asia/calcutta)

private void checkCountry() {


    TelephonyManager telMgr = (TelephonyManager) getSystemService(Context.TELEPHONY_SERVICE);
    if (telMgr == null)
        return;

    int simState = telMgr.getSimState();

    switch (simState) {
        //if sim is not available then country is find out using timezone id
        case TelephonyManager.SIM_STATE_ABSENT:
            TimeZone tz = TimeZone.getDefault();
            String timeZoneId = tz.getID();
            if (timeZoneId.equalsIgnoreCase(Constants.INDIA_TIME_ZONE_ID)) {
               //do something
            } else {
               //do something
            }
            break;

            //if sim is available then telephony manager network country info is used
        case TelephonyManager.SIM_STATE_READY:

           TelephonyManager tm = (TelephonyManager) this.getSystemService(Context.TELEPHONY_SERVICE);
            if (tm != null) {
                String countryCodeValue = tm.getNetworkCountryIso();
                //check if the network country code is "in"
                if (countryCodeValue.equalsIgnoreCase(Constants.NETWORK_INDIA_CODE)) {
                   //do something
                }

                else {
                   //do something
                }

            }
            break;

    }
}
user_90612240

Java (which is what Android uses) allows for one to retrieve the current TZ (Timezone) database name. Although your question mentioned that time zones may not be specific enough, using this method, you can get the country (and even city in some cases) of the user without needing location permissions.

A sample TZ Database Name:

Europe/Zurich reveals that the user is in Switzerland, while Asia/Seoul shows that the user is in South Korea.
(the user may not be in Zurich or Seoul respectively though, maybe in other states/provinces)
Here is a list of all available TZ Database Time Zones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones

So you can get the TZ Database name using:

public String usersCountryByTzDbName() {
    return ZoneId.systemDefault().getId();
}

You can map these to the countries of your choice. The advantages of this method:

  • Unlike context.getResources().getConfiguration().locale.getCountry() like others have suggested, this would work regardless of the user's locale. Imagine if the user lived in Japan and set the language to en_US, you'd detect that the user is in USA instead of Japan.
  • Works on Wi-Fi only devices (which would not work if you used the telephony manager API)

Reference: Java 8 - tz database time zones
Note that according to this SO answer, TZ Database Time Zones may change from time to time, so you should expect new timezones that you have not previously encountered. Also, if the user happens to travel to another country, the other country would be reflected in this method.

Thanks!

user_122042810
Related