On Oct 21, 2012, at 5:01 AM, Maciek Sokolewicz wrote:
On 21-10-2012 01:11, Karl DeSaulniers wrote:
Thanks for the response. Yes, for the US I plan on calculating by
state, but
this website is not geared to just the US.
So I am looking for a solution that lets me also calculate by
country/region.
Was looking on google and found geoip, but not sure if this will do
the job
I am looking for.
Anyone with experience on geoip that can send pointers?
Thanks,
Best,
Karl DeSaulniers
Design Drumm
http://designdrumm.com
Geo IP is based on IP, and I must warn you that IP data is not
always
accurate. Especially here in Europe, companies that are based in
multiple countries sometimes only register their IPs in a single
country, and share them between all the countries they are active
in.
This will give you wrong data from GeoIP. The time difference will
only be 1 hour at max, but still.
That was what my own suspicions were leading to.
I am familiar with the fact that ips can be spoofed.
Thanks for the corroboration.
Best,
Karl DeSaulniers
Design Drumm
http://designdrumm.com
As Bart said, IP is not ideal for this situation.
Since you do have information about the location of that person (as
in country and possible state), you can find out the timezone via a
static database.
The HTML5 geolocation tool is nice, and would certainly help a lot!
However, be aware of the fact that it only works if there is the
device on which the browser runs actually has the ability to find
out its location. Many smartphones have GPS chips, but most PCs
don't. Asking a PC "where are you located?" the PC will answer "How
should I know?".
Luckily for you, the way of country and state is pretty easy. I've
handed you a list to find it in the USA. For most countries in the
world, there's a simple 1:1 mapping of timezone and country (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_zones_by_country
), there are however 21 countries which have multiple timezones. In
these cases, you'll need extra information to be able to distinguish
between them.
For the USA, you already have a way.
For (ex-)colonical islands and such (such as for France), you could
always add them to the country list:
- France
- France (Marquesas Islands)
- France (Gambier)
etc.
Thus treating them as separate countries for your timezone db.
In Russia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brasil, Indonesia,
Kiribati, Mexico,Congo, Ecuador, Micronesia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia
you'll need to know their province / state to more accurately assess
the ideal timezone.
So for most countries, it's a simple 1:1 translation. For the above
countries, you'll need some extra info, and translate further based
on that. You should be able to find the info required yourself, it
just takes a while to collect it.
Alternatively, and this is the most simple way; since you're asking
people for their country and such, simply also ask them about their
timezone. Don't bother automating and putting a heck of a lot of
time into hard to realize solutions, when you can ask a very simple
and easy-to-answer question to the browser instead. :)
- Tul
Yes, I had thought about asking the user his/her timezone, but being
that the product will be bought by some people who may have no idea, I
figured I would try and see if I can set it up myself.
Maybe if the country has a province, i could ask the user then what
province and get my 1:2 that way. If it is a country I can get the
timezone for, just skip that question.
Thanks for the thoughts!
Best,
Karl DeSaulniers
Design Drumm
http://designdrumm.com
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