Country check?

[Anon]

I've been learning PHP for a little while, working with it maybe 2 weeks now, making a new site, just came upon a bit of a problem, would be most grateful if anyone can help out.

I'm trying to find a way to write a function, or somehow check, and find out what country a user is in, from their IP address, if possible, or any way really.

(The site is multi-language, and it would be nice to be able to redirect them to the most obvious choice based on their location. If it's any help, at the moment I have a cookie that records their choice the first time they visit, and sends them to that one each time after)

Thanks!

[Anon]

Wrong way to go about it. What you're describing is content negotiation, which is pretty well documented in the Apache manual.

The Web browser sends a line with each request specifying which languages it prefers, in order. The result is stored in the environment variable $HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE and is accessible to your program. Netscape lets the user set this value (Edit/Preferences/Navigator/Languages); I assume IE does something similar.

If you go to http://www.linux-mandrake.com/ you'll see this in action.

I think you code should (a) look for a cookie, and if it is missing, (b) examine $HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE and branch accordingly, perhaps by issuing a header("Location: index-klingon.php") directive.

Allow your users to set a preference in a cookie and they can override the automatic behavior.

[Anon]

Magnificent! Thanks a million, put this on earlier today, working very nicely. Couldn't find the method for changing the accept language under IE, but seems to be working nicely for everyone, and I got it in NS.

One more quick question? =)
Don't even know if this one is possible, but... I'm looking for a way to format a user's input before it actually gets sent off to the page that processes it. At the moment it's using HTML <form> and <input> tags, which send off to another file to process it, but it's changable. Thanks for all the help!

[Anon]

MS has a habit of moving options about, but in IE 5, you can set your language preferences by clicking "Tools -> Internet Options -> Languages".

Hope this helps.

Jack

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[Anon]

Ahhh, got it. Thanks! Sneaky little thing.