Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 1 year ago.
Improve this question
For a website we're about to implement automatic country/language selection, but still giving the user the choice to change it.
First of all, if the user enters the website using a domain with a country-level TLD they will be presented the correct language by default. But the question is what should the logic be if they come from generic/international TLD such as .com.
Should we prefer using the country we get through their IP address or should we use their browser locale? If both, in which sequence?
As such, I was thinking of this hierarchy:
Use User selection if it was changed before. If it has never been set explicitly by the user:
Use hostname TLD. If it is generic (.com):
Use browser locale. If no locale set or no corresponding language version is available for this locale:
Use IP address. If no corresponding language version is available for the detected country:
Use English.
I would suggest the browser locale rather than the IP address, as one may live elsewhere but prefer a language other than the standard one for that country.
Browser locale as it is the user choice.
When a french man is traveling to England with his laptop, he wants browser locale to be respected not IP.
browser locale should be before ip address,
I'm a native english speaker living abroad, I get annoyed with websites that automatically give me my resident countries language when my browser locale is set to english.
As most countries have several official languages you should rely first on user preferences and then on browser locale, TLD, IP and then english as 'default' (or any major language of your main user base)
Listen folks, I am not sure where you guys are at, I reside in Finland at the moment, and let me tell you, ONE OF THE MOST FRUSTRATING THINGS MUST BE when the IP address is used to choose the language. It absolutely messes up everything, I am pulling my hair, especially anything related to Google, in fact, I simply cannot use Blogger at all, so if you have any influence over this, PLEASE!!!!!
IP address matching would require an (expensive) geo/ip lookup database, a commitment and infrastructure to maintain that, has significant problems with block IPs, and ultimately doesn't even give you the information you want because there isn't a 1:1 relationship between country and language (officially: Canada, or unofficially: United States), not even close.
I prefer cookie preference degrading to TLD/subdomain (or local settings where TLD is language agnostic).
You also have to allow for people coming in through web proxies not being
in the locale their apparent IP address is.
I get a lot of adverts for San Diego based businesses even though I'm in
New Zealand, because I use a web proxy there.
Personally I'd simply go with your primary audience's language on the landing page which is just a language selection page and the user has to select a language to proceed. That sets a cookie so that next time the user visits (from the same browser on the same machine) it redirects the correct language site.
I have several reasons for this.
It's easier to code - no checking IP ranges or browser locale etc. Less code means there's less to go wrong.
You're not assuming anything about the user. They might be an American using a machine set to German in Japan for example.
It's likely to be correct :)
Related
So the original requirements was that on the launch of the app, the mobile app will get the current location of the user precise to City. Based on the city, the server/app client will give-city related content.
I know it would not be too difficult if I could use the core location service (since you know suspicious (self-concerned) users usually will disable the location service for a not-so-trusting app).
I have searched the web for few hours and get an summary of following solutions where I need your help to decide which one could be my best option or if you have any other better ones.
Using the [NSlocale autoupdatingCurrentLocale]
cons:
a.The explanation of the return value of the call from apple's document: "The locale is formed from the settings for the current user’s chosen system locale overlaid with any custom settings the user has specified in System Preferences." From which I don't understand what is "custom settings the user has specified in System Preferences"
reference link
b. This value could be misleading and not related with user's actual current city/country at all.
comments: I would be appreciated if anybody could explain me how the locale is changed according to user's setting.
Getting the current iPhone TimeZone
NSTimeZone *localTime = [NSTimeZone systemTimeZone];
NSLog(#"Current local timezone is %#",[localTime name]);
cons:
a. same as item b above, because user can always specify rather than let the system auto update the time zone.
b. precision is comprimised, only capital city will be listed.
comments:Not very promising but easy to implement
Using IP based location detection webservice
Based on my reading, the process will involve the app sending a request to a server where the server will record the IP of the request.(Don't think from App itself could get its own IP correctly since it may inside a local network) Based on the IP recorded through some third party service (with a IP db or some other available APIs), it will return the city information back to the client.
cons：
a. I've never implemented such thing, don't know if it is feasible for a mobile app.
b. Even if it is possible, don't know if it is faster than the core location service.
comments: If you know it is possible for a iOS app to do so please let me know.
Please kindly give me any thoughts you have or suggest any better solution if you know.
Thank you very much.
A preventive measure to avoid all your trouble would be to create an app that wouldn't appear 'not-so-trusting' and use core location to get the location. If a user still does not allow your app to know the location and knowing his city is a must, let him select a city from the list of cites for which content is available. Of course this opens up a huge hole allowing use to get the content for ANY city. Only you can decide if this is an acceptable tradeoff for simpler implementation.
If you must know the CITY automatically without core location, the first two options you mentioned, 'locale' and 'time zone' are useless as each of them encompasses large number of cities. Also, as you mentioned they're dependent on user's settings.
So reverse geocoding the IP address of a web service request using GeoIP or some such service is your best bet. You can find a lot of discussion and references for this on the web.
NSlocale can be highly inaccurate. My colleague bought the iPhone from New Zealand (he was studying there). When I am testing his phone to get the locale for language, it still show as New Zealand English.
Using IP is possible. I made a quick search and I found:-
Find IP address in iphone
how to get ip address of iphone programmatically
You might want to take a good read from above links.
I still think using Core Location is the best way to get the location of the user.
I need to create a web app that would be different for each country (and not only different language). Let's say the website lists insurance solutions in the country.
For example, users in France typing example.com would need to be sent to http://france.example.com and American users would go to http://us.example.com
All websites would have the same display/layout but the content in the pages would vary as insurance and companies are not the same in each country.
What I'd like is:
in my backend: Manage multiple "country versions" on which I can work to improve features, layout, etc. in a single time without having to update the code on each version. All country versions would stay in similar stat this way.
in the backend: create a filter that "sends" the insurance item I input in my backoffice into the right country-wesbite.
it means for example that the page describing an insurance ALpha in France would only exist in the france version (http://france.example.com/alpha_insurance_description) and not in other country versions.
What kind of architecture must I implement? Are there Rails gems that answer this kind of problematic? (if not maybe some websites describing how to create this kind of multi-country website)
"multi-tenancy" is what you want. The following two railscasts explains two different approches to achieve the same.
http://railscasts.com/episodes/389-multitenancy-with-postgresql
http://railscasts.com/episodes/388-multitenancy-with-scopes
Also you can use subdomain-fu, for subdomain handling and route validation.
I would just use the geoIP data (or user preferences) to find out which country to show and have the content stored in the DB (e.g. insurance companies) with a country code. Seeing as an insurance company will have an address and postcode anyway, this should be pretty simple. That way, both the content and the site language can be set dynamically.
As for the subdomains, you can CNAME all of them to your main site and use a little piece of Rack middleware (hand rolled) to redirect requests to the right subdomain if necessary. After that, the site ignores the subdomain itself and just server content dynamically. Alternatively, you could have some code in the application config that reads the subdomain from the Rack request, extracts the country code, and sets it as a config variable that you then use to flag what country code to use when showing the dynamica content, setting the language, etc.
I have a client who has a requirement that they can't sell particular products 'outside the United States'.
They'd prefer that users can see the site, but when they try to checkout present a message indicating they are outside the United States.
Their site is built in Rails 2.3.8.
Check out the GeoIP gem (make sure to read the instructions, you need to download the GeoLiteCity or GeoLiteCountry database in order for it to work). It uses MaxMind's GeoIP database and can give you the country (or city, in the case of the city database) of an IP address, with some accuracy. There is a commercial database with better accuracy available, which I would recommend for your use case.
However, be advised that this is by no means a definitive solution. Some customers will be turned away wrongfully, and some will be able to order even though they should not. Things like satellite connections, proxy servers and VPN services make IP location impossible, and no database is 100% complete or correct.
What you're looking for is some kind of rough geolocation. One way to get this is to query a DNS zone designed specifically for this; one such zone is described at http://countries.nerd.dk.
I am from Ukraine. And when a particular US shop doesn't want to sell products overseas it usually specifies in the policy/faq/etc that only US bank issued payment cards are accepted.
That seems for me the best solution to solve: "can't sell particular products 'outside the United States'. "
As there are package/mail/freight forwarding companies which can be used by a potential client of that customer though residing outside US but whom the customer won't have to ship directly. That customer would still benefit from those sales but are freed from dialing with burden associated with overseas shipping.
And when you will solve it with geolocation, that customer would still be able making additional money, when people would still be using the site through different kind of proxies, if that customer will be worth it. :)
You can use their data that you pull into your database to check the user's IP address. http://www.ipligence.com/geolocation/ (you still have to worry about proxying)
I would also check where your shipping it to (checking addresses like suggested above), also check the card address with the card backer like VISA, etc..
And suggested above, your money processing agent shouldn't allow any transactions from outside the U.S. on particular items (if possible)
But I did read your statement SOME products may not be allowed to be sold outside the U.S. So you'll need a way to mark those products in your system and then let the user know they are unable to purchase those items, but continue on with others in the cart.
You could use a Rack Middleware, but it will require that you fork it on Github first.
https://github.com/roja/rack-geo
At the moment this project gives you City and Organisation names based on the IP address of the computer making the request - you need Country Code too.
You could add it to the code relatively easily here: https://github.com/roja/rack-geo/blob/master/lib/rack/geo.rb
You could then set a Rack environment variable to indicate if the request is from the USA, in the call method:
Rack::Request.new(env)["born"] = "...in the USA"
Add it to your config file:
config.middleware.use Rack::Geo
And then in your controller you can test if the request has this environment variable set appropriately and redirect to a 'sorry you must be from the USA' page:
if params['born'] == "...in the USA"
redirect_to "/not_from_round_here"
end
Bear in mind that IP address sniffing is fallible. I often take trains in the UK and end up with Google in German.
A geoip alternative is can be found here: http://humbuckercode.co.uk/licks/gems/geoip/
Uses the maxmind libraries, easy to set up, no schema updates needed, fast
I wish to track a user's country from where my website is accesed .
ex; if a customer from a particular is accessing say america how to trace that the user is actually from america.
Is there any way
What you are talking about is called GeoIP and there are many ways to do it. Normally this is done using a third party that has a mapping of IP addresses to physical locations.
This is of course not 100% accurate, as people may be using VPNs, TOR or simply spoofing addresses.
It's not possible in all cases, but most IP addresses can be mapped to a location (even down to the city). There are quite a large number of such geomapping services.
Use MaxMind service.
http://www.maxmind.com/app/javascript_city
They got free and paid versions.
You can determine the country of the IP address of last proxy that a user is using. This is often their country, but not always.
Users can set out to obscure it e.g. by using TOR or another proxy service.
Or their ISPs might be passing them through NAT or through other countries.
And what do you do with the information? Offer them the site in their presumed-native language? Or customise your contact details appropriately?
So you have to think carefully about how you use this information. It is a good idea to present a page in the native language that you think the user is surfing from, but you must make it easy and obvious for the user to change their country. Not all surfers in any given country actually speak the language, and not all people can call toll-free numbers, and not all people in one country are wanting support that's specific to their country, they may be seeking support for when they are elsewhere or for a friend etc.
I'd like to use visitor IP addresses into a company name. This will be used for displaying something like "Hello visitor from Apple Inc." . Note I am looking for the company name, not the domain name. Extra points for determining the originating country. The app is written in Ruby on Rails, but examples in other languages will do. Thanks!
There are databases for this kind of thing, but they are hardly 100% accurate, so I'd think long and hard before using them to make assumptions regarding content you present to your visitors. If you still want to do it, here are two companies that offer databases that include organization level detail:
http://www.maxmind.com/app/ip-location
http://www.ip2location.com/
Edit to clarify based on additional answers:
The organization level detail in the databases from these vendors is different than ISP information, which is what the others are referring to. The databases from the vendors above are actually assigned organizational information based on research, not reverse lookup on IP ownership.
For starters, know that often it is impossible - e.g. many people's connection will be from Insight, or Comcast, or whatever their ISP is. I'm not sure if your intended feature is all that snazzy if you greet me as being "from" Insight Broadband.
You're very likely to get this more wrong than right, but you can get this from a whois client.
For example, to see owners of US addresses (at least), you can whois from the CLI to play around:
whois -h whois.arin.net 17.18.19.20