Getting Started
To use ipstack, the first thing you’re going to want to do is register your details for a free API key (no credit card is required). The API key is a long string of numbers and letters that stops anyone else from accessing data with your account and using up your quota. ipstack’s basic lookup function is really simple: We just access the API, append the IP address we want to look up, and finally add a query string with the value pair “access_key” and your own API key, like this:http://api.ipstack.com/111.222.333.444?access_key=0a9b8c7d6e5f4g3h2i1jipstack then returns a whole host of data for you to use, ranging from the user’s country, city, and even a handy link to an SVG file of the user’s national flag.
Enhancing UX with Geolocation
Let’s say you’re selling online, and you want to offer different shipping rates. Most importantly you want to offer US-based customers free domestic shipping, and international customers cheap worldwide shipping. With ipstack it’s simple to detect which offer to show your users. We’re going to set up a really quick PHP query, to detect which message we should show the current user. First, we open the PHP file and build the query:<?php // Record my API key, and the URL to send the query to $API_KEY = "0a9b8c7d6e5f4g3h2i1j"; // <— CHANGE THIS TO YOUR API KEY $API_URL = "https://api.ipstack.com/"; // Detect the user’s IP address $USER_IP = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]; // Build the API URL (url + ip address + api key) $IPSTACK_QUERY = $API_URL . $USER_IP . "?access_key=" . $API_KEY;Next we run the query and save the result:
// Init CURL $ch = curl_init($IPSTACK_QUERY); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // Grab the data that’s returned $jd = curl_exec($ch); // Clean Up curl_close($ch); // Decode the data ipstack returned $result = json_decode($jd, true);Finally we pull the country code out of the query, compare it to the country code for the US (which is, unsurprisingly ‘us’), then output a different message depending on the result:
// Find the user’s country $user_country = $result["country_code"]; // Check if the user’s country is the United States $isUS = strtolower($result["country_code"]) === "us"; // Output the result if($isUS) { // Offer free shipping echo "Shipping is FREE within the USA!"; } else { // Offer international shipping echo "We ship worldwide for just $25!"; } ?>It really is that simple.
How ipstack Stacks Up
ipstack is one of the simplest geolocation services we’ve used. It offers an incredibly fast way to get started detecting where your users are. We would like to see a little more security; many geolocation services require you to register your domain and block other sites, which means that it’s safe to expose your API key—as it stands, you can’t use ipstack in JavaScript without risking exposing your API key. However, if you’re working in server-side code (as above) then ipstack is as secure as any other provider, and far quicker than most to implement. [pullquote]ipstack is one of the best geolocation services currently available[/pullquote] Based on our testing, ipstack is one of the fastest providers out there. Results were returned in milliseconds, and from a human perspective queries appeared to be returned instantaneously. Perhaps our favorite feature of ipstack is how much data it returns. Some services offer a country code lookup, then charge extra for region, or city lookups. ipstack’s policy is to deliver all of the information you could ever need, so you can work with data however it benefits your users.Conclusion
For simplicity, speed, scalability, and depth of information, we think ipstack is one of the best geolocation services currently available. Our testing was very limited, and we didn’t run any large-scale, intensive applications; however, the companies that do choose ipstack—notably, Microsoft, Samsung, and Airbnb—are handling huge volumes of users with no apparent issues. The potential enhancements to UX that knowing your user’s location allows, opens the door to much greater customer engagement. When you can have all of this for free, it seems crazy not to take advantage of it.WDD Staff
WDD staff are proud to be able to bring you this daily blog about web design and development. If there's something you think we should be talking about let us know @DesignerDepot.
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