[VB.NET][TUT] Class CountryIP (With C# example)

Hey, it's me again with another tutorial.

Do you have to check to see where the IP that is viewing your site is from? Or want to block certain countries from viewing pages? Well listen up, because you're going to create your very own class so you don't have to re-write the code every time.

Start by adding a new class to your project. I'm naming mine CountryIP.

Code:

Public Class CountryIP
End Class

Next, Import these four System Namespace's

Code:

Imports System.Net
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Xml
Imports System.Collections.Specialized

Public Class CountryIP
End Class

*Explanation of why we need these*

- System.Net : So we can access and use the HTTPWebRequest/Response Classes
- System.IO : So we can access the StreamReader Class to work with the data retrieved from the web
- System.Xml : So we can work the xml the site sends back
- System.Collections.Specialized : So we can parse the xml for the data we are looking for

Now, the first function I am going to make for this class is IPRequestHelper. This function will handle all of my web requests and responses so I don't have to re-write the code if needed later on down the road. I'm going to set two parameters to pass into this function, one is url and the other is ipAddress.

Code:

Public Function IPRequestHelper(ByVal url As String, ByVal ipAddress As String) As String
End Function

Next we declare a string variable that will combine our url and ipAddress together

Code:

Public Function IPRequestHelper(ByVal url As String, ByVal ipAddress As String) As String
	Dim checkURL As String = url & ipAddress
End Function

Now, we declare our HTTPWebRequest/Response variables to handle the "GET" to the url and retrieve the response

Code:

Public Function IPRequestHelper(ByVal url As String, ByVal ipAddress As String) As String
	Dim checkURL As String = url & ipAddress

	Dim objRequest As HttpWebRequest = CType(WebRequest.Create(url), HttpWebRequest)
	Dim objResponse As HttpWebResponse = CType(objRequest.GetResponse(), HttpWebResponse)
End Function

Then, declare our StreamReader variable to use our ObjResponse and open up a stream and get all of the data it contains. Then we close the stream and dispose of it to free memory. We return our responseRead value

Code:

Public Function IPRequestHelper(ByVal url As String, ByVal ipAddress As String) As String
	Dim checkURL As String = url & ipAddress

	Dim objRequest As HttpWebRequest = CType(WebRequest.Create(url), HttpWebRequest)
	Dim objResponse As HttpWebResponse = CType(objRequest.GetResponse(), HttpWebResponse)

	Dim responseStream As New StreamReader(objResponse.GetResponseStream())
	Dim responseRead As String = responseStream.ReadToEnd()

	responseStream.Close()
	responseStream.Dispose()

	Return responseRead
End Function

Now that we have our helper function, let us create our GetCountryByIP function

Code:

Public Function GetCountryByIP(ByVal ipAddress As String) As String
End Function

We can set our IP variable using the "REMOTE_ADDR" Server Variable. Then we set our response variable based on the results from our IPRequestHelper function.

Code:

Public Function GetCountryByIP(ByVal ipAddress As String) As String
	Dim ipResponse As String = IPRequestHelper("http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query_country.php?ip=", ipAddress)
End Function

Next, we declare our XmlDocument variable which loads the xml returned in the ipResponse variable. Then we tell it which node to select for our base

Code:

Public Function GetCountryByIP(ByVal ipAddress As String) As String
	Dim ipResponse As String = IPRequestHelper("http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query_country.php?ip=", ipAddress)

	Dim ipInfoXML As XmlDocument = New XmlDocument() : ipInfoXML.LoadXml(ipResponse)
	Dim responseXML As XmlNodeList = ipInfoXML.GetElementsByTagName("Response")
End Function

We now declare a NameValueCollection array variable. Then we take the first item of the responseXML data array (Since it will only be one response returned) and add the ChildNode key and value that we want to our NameValueCollections variable. After get the data added to the dataXML variable we declare a string variable the retrieves the very first key of the dataXML. We then return our key value.

Code:

Public Function GetCountryByIP(ByVal ipAddress As String) As String
	Dim ipResponse As String = IPRequestHelper("http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query_country.php?ip=", ipAddress)

	Dim ipInfoXML As XmlDocument = New XmlDocument() : ipInfoXML.LoadXml(ipResponse)
	Dim responseXML As XmlNodeList = ipInfoXML.GetElementsByTagName("Response")

	Dim dataXML As NameValueCollection = New NameValueCollection()

	dataXML.Add(responseXML.Item(0).ChildNodes(2).InnerText, responseXML.Item(0).ChildNodes(2).Value)

	Dim xmlValue As String = dataXML.Keys(0)

	Return xmlValue
End Function

There, your class is all setup and ready to go. If you want to use it you can do :

Code:

Response.Write(CountryIP.GetCountryByIP(Request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_ADDR")))

That will output "US" if you're in the United States, etc.

Below are the full VB and C# Class.

VB

Code:

Imports System.Net
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Xml
Imports System.Collections.Specialized

Public Class CountryIP
	Public Function GetCountryByIP(ByVal ipAddress As String) As String
		Dim ipResponse As String = IPRequestHelper("http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query_country.php?ip=", ipAddress)

		Dim ipInfoXML As XmlDocument = New XmlDocument() : ipInfoXML.LoadXml(ipResponse)
		Dim responseXML As XmlNodeList = ipInfoXML.GetElementsByTagName("Response")

		Dim dataXML As NameValueCollection = New NameValueCollection()

		dataXML.Add(responseXML.Item(0).ChildNodes(2).InnerText, responseXML.Item(0).ChildNodes(2).Value)

		Dim xmlValue As String = dataXML.Keys(0)

		Return xmlValue
	End Function

	Public Function IPRequestHelper(ByVal url As String, ByVal ipAddress As String) As String
		Dim checkURL As String = url & ipAddress

		Dim objRequest As HttpWebRequest = CType(WebRequest.Create(url), HttpWebRequest)
		Dim objResponse As HttpWebResponse = CType(objRequest.GetResponse(), HttpWebResponse)

		Dim responseStream As New StreamReader(objResponse.GetResponseStream())
		Dim responseRead As String = responseStream.ReadToEnd()

		responseStream.Close()
		responseStream.Dispose()

		Return responseRead
	End Function
End Class

C#

Code:

using System.Net;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml;
using System.Collections.Specialized;

public class CountryIP {
	public string GetCountryByIP(string ipAddress) {
	  string ipResponse = IPRequestHelper("http://ipinfodb.com/ip_query_country.php?ip=", ipAddress);
	  
	  XmlDocument ipInfoXML = new XmlDocument();
	  ipInfoXML.LoadXml(ipResponse);
	  XmlNodeList responseXML = ipInfoXML.GetElementsByTagName("Response");
	  
	  NameValueCollection dataXML = new NameValueCollection();
	  
	  dataXML.Add(responseXML.Item(0).ChildNodes(2).InnerText, responseXML.Item(0).ChildNodes(2).Value);
	  
	  string xmlValue = dataXML.Keys(0);
	  
	  return xmlValue;
	}
	
	public string IPRequestHelper(string url, string ipAddress) {
	  string checkURL = url + ipAddress;
		
	  HttpWebRequest objRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
	  HttpWebResponse objResponse = (HttpWebResponse)objRequest.GetResponse();
	  
	  StreamReader responseStream = new StreamReader(objResponse.GetResponseStream());
	  string responseRead = responseStream.ReadToEnd();
	  
	  responseStream.Close();
	  responseStream.Dispose();
	  
	  return responseRead;
	}
}

Thanks for reading my tutorial! If there is anything I need to explain better or work on feel free to comment!

I didn't split this into two tutorials because there really is no need, or so I figured.

This was originally posted by me over at DreamInCode.net