code issues? or html issues?

[radiojackie]

Hi, I'm new to PHP and I'm trying to just play around.
I set up Apache 2.2 on a spare local machine (windows xp) and have installed PHP5 successfully. i made a test page (test.php) and placed in my 'htdocs' and when i go to http://localhost/test.php i see the page just fine.

Now, i know i am jumping in over my head a bit but wanted to play around with this geolocation bit in PHP which uses curl. (curl module is enabled in my php.ini file, btw).

So, i went to this site and have copied this script for PHP:
http://www.quova.com/quova-on-demand-rest-api-documentation/#PHP
I have a username/password to retrieve the data from the web service, so that's not the issue.

All I did was copy/paste the 'php' code displayed and called the file "ip.php"
When i go to http://localhost/ip.php - nothing happens. I thought I'd see the IP location results for the given IP address. How can I make this work? what have i done wrong?

any help greatly appreciated!|
thanks,
Jackie

[johanafm]

I've copy pasted the code from that page and added some error checking as well as some comments.

function quovaXML($ip = '') {
	 # These obviously need to be updated to match the user info provided to you by them
	$quovaUser = 'username';
	$quovaPass = 'password';

/* If no IP address is provided as function argument, use the IP address that
	requested this script (i.e. the machine on which you are viewing this page)
	As such, this will not work if you are running the script from CLI (command line interface)
*/
if (empty($ip)) $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

// initiate curl and set options
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://webservices.quova.com/ipinfo/' . $ip);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $quovaUser . ':' . $quovaPass);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);

/* Normally, curl_exec returns true on success, false on error. With this option set
	the body (and possibly headers) is returned on success, false on error.
*/
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

# Since the request can fail completely, it's not enough to check for http status code 200
if (!($data = curl_exec($ch))) {
	# error
	echo curl_errno($ch) . ': ' . curl_error($ch);
	curl_close($ch);
	exit;
}
$headers = curl_getinfo($ch);

// close curl
curl_close($ch);

// return XML data
if ($headers['http_code'] != '200') {
	return false;
} else {
	return($data);
	}
}

/* If your account only allows access from a specific IP address, that
	IP address needs to be provided here
*/
if (!($result = quovaXML('4.2.2.2')) {
	echo 'HTTP status code is not 200';
}
else {
	echo $result;
}

[radiojackie]

hi johanafm,
Thanks so much for your help!
I copy/pasted your code and put an IP address in the IP function argument, e.g.,:

function quovaXML($ip = '206.161.1.52') {

and then i added the username and password creds as needed.

I saved the file to test.php but all that is displayed is the code on the browser.

what am i missing? I thought it would build out the output (i.e., IP address data) on the page.

What I eventually want to do is have an IP address be submitted and then it calls out to the web service and outputs the location data, via xml, on the page.

but, i guess that's the next step, first i want to just get this code to work with some sort of output where i can tell it is communicating successfully with the web service.

what am i doing wrong?? 🙁
I'm playing around with the code / xml now to see where i can get. i'll let you know if/when i succeed but if you have any other insight/help, i'd appreciate it!

thanks again for your help.

Jackie

[woodeye]

It sounds to me like there's either an issue with your PHP installation, or you didn't wrap the code in <?php ... ?> tags. I know you said that you ran a test.php page, but was there php on that page?

I always do a phpinfo.php doc to test. Like this:

<?php
      phpinfo();
?>

Then I can always refer to that to check my php settings.

[radiojackie]

hi woodeye,

i did wrap the code in <?php ... ?> tags...
but i then get an error saying : parse error, syntax error, unexpected.... line 48.

i put the tags at the beginning of my code and the ending tag, well, at the very end.

hm. i'll keep playing but thanks for your input!

[radiojackie]

hi johnafm!
thanks again for your code help.
it worked and i found a ")" missing in the code and that fixed most of it all.

one thing - i named the file checkip.php. now, if i want to be able to see it on my local system i am just put in http://localhost/checkip.php and the xml output displays the info for the IP I have listed here successfully (yay):
if (!($result = quovaXML('4.2.2.2')) {
echo 'HTTP status code is not 200';

Now, is there a way I can type in the URL the same thing but have it look up a different IP from the URL request?
for example, could i do something like: http://localhost/checkip.php$ip=202.222.43.2

is this possible?

THanks!
Jackie

[johanafm]

Yes it is. The standard delimiter for the query string is ?

http://example.com/path/file.php?queryString

The query string parameters are name value pairs, separated by &, that end up in the php super global array $_GET

# url can be either with or without the ip parameter
# http://localhost/checkip.php
# http://localhost/checkip.php?ip=202.222.43.2

# if it isn't set, maybe use some default ip address
if (!isset($_GET['ip'])) {
	$ip = '206.161.1.52';
}
# otherwise use the input you got. But _always_ validate and/or sanitize input...
else {
	$ip = $_GET['ip'];

# you can probably google for a regexp that checks both IPv4 and IPv6
if (!preg_match('#(?:\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}#', $ip)) {
	# invalid ip, use default
	$ip =  '206.161.1.52';
}
}

Since this regexp only deals with IPv4 addresses, and poorly at that (999.999.999.999 would work...), you would be better off using ip2long instead. But that one only deals with IPv4 addresses and you might want/need to deal with IPv6 as well.

[radiojackie]

wow, thanks for quick reply.
it's totally fine that the code only accept IPv4 even if it accepts non-existing IPv4 addresses... and I don't think IPv6 is their DB yet anyway...

So, thanks for the code! but where would I place it in the original code you provided? or is this totally new code (i.e, not use original code you wrote) and no need to use Curl anymore?

original code you wrote:

function quovaXML($ip = '') {

These obviously need to be updated to match the user info provided to you by them

$quovaUser = 'username';
$quovaPass = 'password';

/* If no IP address is provided as function argument, use the IP address that
    requested this script (i.e. the machine on which you are viewing this page)
    As such, this will not work if you are running the script from CLI (command line interface)
*/
if (empty($ip)) $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

// initiate curl and set options
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://webservices.quova.com/ipinfo/' . $ip);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $quovaUser . ':' . $quovaPass);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);

/* Normally, curl_exec returns true on success, false on error. With this option set
    the body (and possibly headers) is returned on success, false on error.
*/
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

# Since the request can fail completely, it's not enough to check for http status code 200
if (!($data = curl_exec($ch))) {
    # error
    echo curl_errno($ch) . ': ' . curl_error($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    exit;
}
$headers = curl_getinfo($ch);

// close curl
curl_close($ch);

// return XML data
if ($headers['http_code'] != '200') {
    return false;
} else {
    return($data);
    }

}

/ If your account only allows access from a specific IP address, that
IP address needs to be provided here
/
if (!($result = quovaXML('4.2.2.2')) {
echo 'HTTP status code is not 200';
}
else {
echo $result;
}

[johanafm]

radiojackie;10965280 wrote:

wow, thanks for quick reply.
it's totally fine that the code only accept IPv4 even if it accepts non-existing IPv4 addresses... and I don't think IPv6 is their DB yet anyway...

In that case, use ip2long to check that the input is a valid IPv4 string.

function quovaXML($ip = '') {
# as before
}

# new code here

# change the string literal to $ip
if (!($result = quovaXML('4.2.2.2')) {
    echo 'HTTP status code is not 200';
}
else {
    echo $result;
}

[radiojackie]

thanks all for your help, esp you johanafm!!!