About
This module uses a visitor's IP address to identify the geographical location
(country) of the user. The module makes this determination and stores the
result as an ISO 3166-1 2-character country code in the Backdrop $user object,
but otherwise has no effect on the operation of your site. The intent is
simply to provide the information for use by other modules. Anonymous users
are not identified by country.
Installation
Check requirements: PHP 5 with cURL support enabled.
Copy ip2country.tar.gz into your sites/all/modules directory and unzip/untar it.
In your web browser, navigate to admin/modules and enable the following
module: IP-based determination of Country
NOTE! When ip2country is installed, it downloads a large amount of
data off the Internet to build a table in your Backdrop database. This
process can take several minutes, so please be patient and WAIT until
the page loads! You can verify a correct install by looking into your
Backdrop database for the ip2country table and verifying that it is full
of data.
This module defines an "administer ip2country" permission, which must be
explicitly enabled for the administration user at admin/people/permissions.
You must now enter values in the administration menus. Defaults are chosen
reasonably, but you should examine them and set them as you wish.
Go to admin/config/people/ip2country to review and change settings for the
IP-based determination of Country module. You can read about the Debug
preferences in the "Troubleshooting" section below.
Finally, cron needs to be running for automatic database updates. If you
haven't set up cron for your Backdrop site, refer to
http://backdrop.org/documentation/install/after/cron for instructions.
Because the database update takes so long to run, you may have to increase
the allowed cron run time. This requires editing includes/common.inc and
changing the time in the function backdrop_cron_run() from 240 to 10*60. This
function can be found in includes/common.inc under your Backdrop root. Look
for the first occurrence of set_time_limit() in this function and replace
the argument with 600.
Everything should now work. If it doesn't, read the rest of this document
(which you really should have done first, anyway!). If you still have
problems see the "Troubleshooting" section below.
Features
This module uses the IP Address that a user is connected from to deduce the
Country where the user is located. This method is not foolproof, because
a user may connect through an anonymizing proxy, or may be in an unusual
situation, such as using an ISP from a neighboring country, or using an
IP block leased from a company in another country. Additionally, users
accessing a server on a local network may be using an IP that is not assigned
to any country (e.g. 192.168.1.x or 127.0.0.1).
Country determination occurs upon user login. If a country can be determined
from the IP address, the ISO 3166 2-character country code is stored in the
Backdrop $user object as $user->country_iso_code_2. If no country can be
determined, this member variable is left unset.
Alternatively, a function is provided so that you may look up the country
from within your own code, for your own use. The way to use this is:
$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$country_code = ip2country_get_country($ip);
Backdrop core provides a function which can transform this $country_code into
a country name. Use it like this:
include_once BACKDROP_ROOT . '/includes/locale.inc';
$country_list = country_get_list();
$country_name = $country_list[$country_code];
The database used by this module is maintained by ARIN, the American Registry
for Internet Numbers (http://www.arin.net/about_us/index.html), which is one of
the five official Regional Internet Registries (RIR) responsible for assigning
IP addresses. The claim is the database is 98% accurate, with most of the
problems coming from users in less-developed countries. Regardless, there's
no more-authoritative source of this information. Although the default RIR
used is ARIN, an admin menu allows you to choose any of the five.
If you have cron set up for your Backdrop site, this IP to Country database will
be automatically updated at a frequency determined by the admin menu at
admin/config/people/ip2country. A checkbox is provided to turn on/off
logging of database updates. The default update frequency is 1 week, but it
can be adjusted from 1 day up to 4 weeks. Because of the time it takes to
update and because the database is very stable, shorter database update times
are not needed.
Database updates may also be performed manually by pressing the button at
admin/config/people/ip2country. Note this can take 2-5 minutes to complete -
do not interrupt the update process or the database will be incomplete and
you'll have to do it again.
Limitations
Because the database update takes so long to run, you may have to increase
the allowed cron run time. This requires editing includes/common.inc and
changing the time in the function backdrop_cron_run() from 240 to 10*60.
Troubleshooting
Does your site have PHP 5 built with cURL support? Execute
or visit admin/reports/status/php to see the details of your PHP installation.
Because it's not practical to log in from another country in order to test
these features, a debugging setting is provided to allow the administrator
to specify a Country or IP Address to simulate. When debugging is enabled,
it only affects the country stored in the administrator's $user object.
To use this debugging setting, check the box "Admin Debug" at
admin/config/people/ip2country. You must also specify either a Country to
simulate or an IP to simulate. A notification will be printed across the top
of the page when you submit the form, letting you know that the debug feature
has successfully been turned on (or off). The simulated Country or IP will be
used for the administrator until this feature is turned off in the admin menu.
When all else fails, read the comments in the code - there are some debugging
print statements left in that can be uncommented to see what is going on, and
most functions are described in the comments.
License
This project is GPL v2 software. See the LICENSE.txt file in this directory for
complete text.
Current Maintainers
- Docwilmot (https://github.com/docwilmot
Credits
- Original developer: Tim Rohaly http://drupal.org/user/202830