How to determine location of device in Android using IP address

Question

I am developing an Android app. I want to determine the location of the device using its IP address. Where do I start? The links on Google APIs are not conclusive enough. Thanks

Answer 1

You can use freegeoip.net.

It's a free, open source service. You can use the service directly or run it on your personal server. It can also get deployed to Heroku pretty easily.

To get the IP location simply use OkHttp to send a http/https request:

String url = "https://freegeoip.net/json/"
Request mRequest = new Request.Builder()
        .url(url)
        .build();
Context mContext // A UI context
new OkHttpClient().newCall(mRequest).enqueue(new Callback() {
    Handler mainHandler = new Handler(mContext.getApplicationContext().getMainLooper());

    @Override
    public void onResponse(Call call, Response response) {
        String responseBody = null;
        try {
            responseBody = response.body().string();
        } catch (final IOException e) {
            mainHandler.post(new Runnable() {
                @Override
                public void run() {
                    // handle error
                }
            });
        }

        final String finalResponseBody = responseBody;
        mainHandler.post(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                // handle response body
                try {
                    JSONObject locationObject = new JSONObject(finalResponseBody);
                } catch (JSONException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        });
    }

    @Override
    public void onFailure(Call call, final IOException e) {
        mainHandler.post(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                mNetworkListener.onNetworkError(e.getMessage());
            }
        });
    }
});

And the response will look like something like this:

{
    "ip": "192.30.253.113",
    "country_code": "US",
    "country_name": "United States",
    "region_code": "CA",
    "region_name": "California",
    "city": "San Francisco",
    "zip_code": "94107",
    "time_zone": "America/Los_Angeles",
    "latitude": 37.7697,
    "longitude": -122.3933,
    "metro_code": 807
}