How do I limit which countries can view my website ( PHP )

Question

In there an easy way to do this in PHP. I want to make sure that only web requests from certain countries are able to access my website.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

There are certain classes that can detect the locale of the user agent. Try something like that. Zend Framework has a great class for this Zend_Locale

Answer 2

Use an IP geolocation database (some are free) and $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] to get the visitor's IP address.

http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity is a free (less accurate) version of a commercial one.

Answer 3

Both of the answers (geolocation, user agent) will work but can be defeated. Someone can use a proxy server, or change their user agent. Firefox even has a plugin for that purpose.

Answer 4

Like Gilles, I've used MaxMind's GeoIP stuff for this in the past - configured with the PECL extension for speed. It works reasonably well, but...

The requirement for this kind of thing tends to come from somebody that doesn't understand that it is impossible to reliably determine a visitors location in this way. It's very important that the person asking for it be encouraged to understand that it is almost useless. Typical thing that happens with geo-location in this:

Client: I want to be able to restrict content by IP
Dev: You do know that that is impossible to do reliably?
Client: Ah yes, but this company say they will sell me something that will do it
Dev: Yes but it isn't accurate and is easy to circumvent and usually indicates a poor business model for internet based content
Client: Can you do it?
Dev: Whatever...

...Six months later...

Client: Some of my visitors have been complaining they can't see my content and some bad people who shouldn't see it have been able to!
Dev: /me slaps head

It's only one step on from there to "can I have it so that when a user right clicks in their browser a little sign pops up saying 'these images are copyright Idiot Inc.'?"

Sorry, obviously in a cynical mood today!

Answer 5

There's also a pear package

http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Geo

Answer 6

if you use the answer of Ben Dowling and the code doesn't work, try this:

if (!in_array(substr($country, 0, 2), $allowed_countries)) {

instead of:

if(!in_array($country, $allowed_countries)) {