On the php|architect site Jeremy Kendall has a new article looking at geolocation in PHP and how, despite some comments in the past about its difficulty, some more recent tools make it relatively simple.

Have you ever wanted to add location-aware content to your web applications? Would you believe me if I told you it was dead easy, and you could be up and running in about 10 minutes? The first thing you want to do is use someone else’s work. Geolocation is a solved problem; there’s no need to roll your own. I went searching for free Geolocation APIs and found two I wanted to try: MaxMind’s GeoLite API and Quova.

He briefly introduces each data source - GeoLite as a downloadable database and Quova as an API. Sample code is included for using the data from both of these services to find a location based on an IP address. He does include one caveat though - be careful about accuracy, they usually only promise things to be within 25 miles of the spot you're actually looking for.

On his blog today Asvin Balloo has posted the first part of his look at his method for geolocating the visitors to your website using the PEAR GeoIP package and the MaxMind GeoLite Country information.

In this first part, he just makes sure that you have what you need installed before really getting started. Brief installation instructions are provided and example code is included to make sure things are up and working correctly (a lookup for whatever IP you're coming from).

It uses the lookupCountryName method to translate the information based on the MaxMind data.