How to get the user's country for a HTTP request in the Backend?

Question

I am trying to get the country where the user is sending the request to my server.

So far I have found those solutions:

https://github.com/fiorix/freegeoip

https://github.com/maxmind/GeoIP2-java

These solutions are using MaxMind database GeoIP2 Country Database which has a license and for this specific project I have restriction with Libraries (legal aspects because of the business)

I have found some topics mentioning that Google API can provide this service, but that doesn't interest me as I want a solution that I can host myself and it is implemented using Java or Kotlin.

Does someone know a solution different from the one mentioned (that runs on the backend)?

user_1921982 · Answer

I've coded a little service that returns the country based on data I've acquired from http://ipverse.net/

It should be license free but correct me if I am wrong. According to the website the data is provided by the five big RIRs.

The website updates its data ~5am. The Cron job that updates the IP Blocks is scheduled at 6am. The data should be accurate I guess.

*edit I've replicated the algo and created a github action to keep it updated, check it out: https://github.com/jaecktec/ncc-inetnum-parser

user_3657208 · Answer

Not sure if, from an architecture point of view, this is a good solution, but you could install a command line tool in your backend server and use that.

For example: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/zesty/en/man1/geoiplookup.1.html

There are also some free web API you could use, have a look here

How to get the user's country for a HTTP request in the Backend?

2 Answers