Hi, I'm tying to get a certain Python script (although I guess it isn't really the language that's going to matter here) to find out the current geographic location of the machine running it. As you might have guessed, it's a little script that reports my laptop's location when it boots and stuff :)
Is there any free web service or API to do this? I was pretty impressed by Google Maps' ability to pinpoint my house (it was off by only ~5 meters!).
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370answers:
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A:
I came across this Python script http://netsekure.org/wp-content/uploads/ip2loc.py which might be something similar to what you are looking for.
Himanshu
2009-09-30 23:01:49
The script you cited only finds my ISP's address a few counties away, rather than mine, but that's probably as close as you can expect to get with public data. It looks like a nice script. Relies on having an Internet connection, of course, but so does sending the email, so this answer looks like a good one! +1
Brandon Craig Rhodes
2009-09-30 23:13:37
+1
A:
You may be able to use Google's GeoLocation API (API docs here). From the docs:
"Communication is done over HTTP, with Gears making the request using HTTP POST. Both request and response are formatted as JSON, and the content type of both is application/json."
The python standard library json module can be found here.
But what's the IP or DNS of a location provider to target with that HTTP POST? (Besides the issue of locating cellphone towers, wifi providers, etc, to help narrow things down wrt "just the IP"...).
Alex Martelli
2009-10-01 01:47:55