Get The User's IP Address With JavaScript
Today, the number of location-based applications has increased. GPS (global positioning system), news sites, suggestion platforms, and shipping solutions in e-commerce applications are just a few of them. The increase in location-based web applications has revealed new geolocation technology concepts. One of them is the geolocation API. In other words, they are geolocation services from which websites obtain the geographic location information of their users. JavaScript geolocation API, as it is known in the web world.
The JavaScript geolocation API is a location service that runs in the JavaScript layer of websites. It is one of the most popular ways to obtain a user's location information. In addition, this API also allows obtaining the IP address of the user on the website. In this article, we will mention how the JavaScript geolocation API used in web applications provides both the IP address and location information of the users, and we will develop an example code integration.
How to Retrieve IP Addresses and Location Data in Applications?
Businesses first need the user's IP address in order to access the user's position on their websites or mobile devices. Then they obtain the location data of this IP address. It is possible to achieve this two-stage process with a single API.
Geolocation APIs nowadays provide both IP address and detailed geographical location data corresponding to the IP address. They provide this with two different endpoints. While one of the endpoints provides the IP address, it takes the other IP address as a parameter and provides the geolocation object of the IP address.
Which Geolocation APIs Allow to Obtain Users' IP Addresses?
Today, there are many APIs that provide geolocation to the market. Most of these APIs provide current position data for IP addresses. But it doesn't help you get the IP addresses of users on websites or mobile devices. Therefore, using these APIs is seen as a more dysfunctional and costly solution.
The geolocation APIs listed below provide businesses and developers with both the IP address and geographic position object of users through a single API.
Ipstack API
Ipify
Abstract API
Ipdata
The ipstack API: The Best IP Geolocation API
The ipstack is the most popular geo IP API providing user location. It is used by more than 100,000 developers and businesses today because it provides accurate location data. Microsoft, Samsung, and Airbnb large businesses are just a few of the forwardings that use this API.
High accuracy is one of the most important principles of the ipstack API. It provides the most up-to-date usage of more than 2 million unique locations around the world. In this way, businesses can access the user's current location data with the most up-to-date address information.
One of the reasons why the ipstack API is used a lot today is that it provides a free subscription plan. Although it provides more than one affordable subscription plan, you can perform your transactions in limited free plans with up to 100 requests per month.
The most important aspect of this API that is preferred by developers is its ease of integration. This API returns data in JSON or XML format. In this way, it can be flexibly integrated by applications.
In addition, it helps developers a lot in error handling. In case of any error, the response it provides includes an error code and an explanatory error message.
What Does The ipstack API Offer in its World-Class Documentation?
The ipstack API offers more comprehensive and up-to-date documentation than today's traditional API documentation.
In this documentation, there are available endpoints of the ipstack API and their details, detailed error handling information, sample cURL URLs, and code integration examples of more than one programming language.
What are the Available Endpoints in the ipstack API?
This API offers multiple endpoints to meet multiple needs. These are 'Standard Lookup', 'Bulk Lookup', and 'Requester Lookup' and they all work with HTTP Get method.
Standard Lookup: This endpoint provides detailed location information of an incoming IP address as a parameter.
Bulk Lookup: With this endpoint, location data of more than one IP address can be obtained in a list at the same time.
Requester Lookup: It is the endpoint of obtaining an IP address. It does not take any extra mandatory parameter other than the API key. Provides the IP address of the requested client's device location.
How do Retrieve a User's IP Address with Geo Location API?
In this section, we will integrate the ipstack API, the most popular geolocation API today, into the JavaScript programming language and see how a user's IP address is obtained.
For this, we will first register one of the subscription plans offered by the ipstack API and obtain an API key.
After obtaining the API key, we will create a file on the desktop and name it 'ip-geolocation-api.html'.
Let's open this file in a code editor and paste the following codes into it. This application will request the ipstack API with the JavaScript JQuery code that will run when we enter the web page we have created. This request will return the IP address of the device we entered on the web page. The returning IP address will also be shown on the web page.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>ipstack API: IP Geolocation API</title>
<script src=
"https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.2.1/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>$.getJSON("http://api.ipstack.com/check?access_key=YOUR_API_KEY", function(data) {
$("#ip-address").html(data.ip);
})
</script>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<h3>Visiter's IP address is:</h3>
<p id="ip-address">
</p>
</center>
</body>
</html>
After pasting the codes, let's paste the API key we obtained in the previous step into the 'YOUR_API_KEY' field. Now, let's run the file named 'ip-geolocation-api.html' that we created in a browser. You will see your own IP address in the output we will get.
Conclusion
To summarize, in this article, we have touched on the features of an IP geolocation API, the data it provides, and many more details. Then, we quickly integrated and used the Requester Lookup endpoint of today's most popular IP geolocation API, ipstack API, into the JavaScript code of a web application in just a few steps.
FAQs
Q: What is the best way to get a user's IP address in a web application?
A: There are many ways to obtain users' IP addresses from a web application. The most popular of these ways is to obtain the IP address with a geolocation API. The geolocation API provides the IP addresses to which website visitors connect to the Internet with a single HTTP request.
Q: How to get retrieve IP using geolocation API in web applications?
A: A geolocation API integrated into web applications do not need any parameters other than the API key to provide the IP address. It quickly provides the user's IP address by sending a request to the API endpoint it provides.
Q: What is the geolocation services API used for?
A: The geolocation services API meets many needs. Providing the IP addresses of website visitors is the first method that comes to mind. However, the geolocation services API also provides detailed location information of the IP addresses provided. In this way, both the IP address and detailed location information of the IP address are obtained with a single API.
Q: How to get detailed location data from an IP address?
A: Geolocation APIs are used to obtain detailed location data from the IP address. Geolocation APIs can provide both the IP address and detailed location data of the IP address. But geolocation APIs provide sensitive data. For this reason, you must obtain the necessary permissions from the user before obtaining this data.
Q: Is it important that the data in the global IP database services are up-to-date?
A: Yes, it is important. Today, location data can be updated for various reasons. Incorrect location data can cause financial and legal damages to businesses. The up-to-dateness of the location data provided by the global IP database services used by the Geolocation APIs is very important for data accuracy.