How to Install GeoIP extension on CentOS

GeoIP from PECL is powerful extension used to determine geographical locations of IP addresses and domain names.
This is useful if you want to set a language or redirection based on location of your visitor. Check out the PHP docs for a full list of GeoIP functions.

We start by installing the GeoIP library on your system.

yum install GeoIP-devel
yum install php-pear
yum install php-pecl-geoip

Last option we need to remember is just to create entry in out php.ini file

extension=geoip.so

We can also update out database, to the most recent DB file:

cd /usr/share/GeoIP
wget http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCountry/GeoIP.dat.gz
wget http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz
gunzip GeoIP.dat.gz
gunzip GeoLiteCity.dat.gz
mv GeoLiteCity.dat GeoIPCity.dat

The alternative way to install this extension is to use PECL

pecl install geoip

or with PHP7 – it’s quite important to force version number, because default (stable) won’t work with PHP 7

pecl install geoip-1.1.1

 

And then have test it:

$record = geoip_record_by_name($_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]);
	if ($record) {
    	print_r($record);
	}

Finally.. if you still can’t install this extension you can always look at freegeoip.net. Data format is exactly the same, so you can just wrap it with something like that:

 

function geoip_record_by_name( string $hostname) : array {
	$json_data = file_get_contents("http://freegeoip.net/json/" . $hostname);
	return json_decode($json_data, TRUE);
}