How to Install GeoIP extension on CentOS

Small 2019 update – Please check out this library – github.com/maxmind/MaxMind-DB-Reader-php. It’s a straight replacement of PHP module.

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);
}