ruby on rails - Autofilling a form with visitor's country using IP address -

this first time i'm doing this. have form new users (investor model) , want once form loaded, based on visitor's ip, country field filled country. heard of geoip gem. don't know how use it. tried do. downloaded geoip.dat.gz http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry, extracted , put db folder of app. not sure if on right path.

gemfile

source 'https://rubygems.org' gem 'rails', '4.2.1' gem 'pg' gem 'sass-rails', '~> 5.0' gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.3.0' gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 4.1.0'  gem 'jquery-rails' gem 'turbolinks' gem 'jbuilder', '~> 2.0' gem 'sdoc', '~> 0.4.0', group: :doc gem 'foundation-rails', '~> 5.5.2.1' gem 'foundation-icons-sass-rails' gem 'geoip', '~> 1.5.0'  # use activemodel has_secure_password # gem 'bcrypt', '~> 3.1.7'  # use unicorn app server # gem 'unicorn'  # use capistrano deployment # gem 'capistrano-rails', group: :development gem 'rails_12factor', group: :production  group :development, :test   # call 'byebug' anywhere in code stop execution , debugger console   gem 'byebug'    # access irb console on exception pages or using <%= console %> in views   gem 'web-console', '~> 2.0'    # spring speeds development keeping application running in background. read more: https://github.com/rails/spring   gem 'spring' end 

environment.rb

# load rails application. require file.expand_path('../application', __file__)  # initialize rails application. rails.application.initialize!  config.gem 'geoip' 

the following steps shows cannot load such file -- geoip error in browser. , can't move on trying interpolate user's country in form. appreciated. investors_controller.rb

require 'geoip'  class investorscontroller < applicationcontroller    @geoip ||= geoip.new("/db/geoip.dat")       remote_ip = request.remote_ip    if remote_ip != "127.0.0.1" #todo: check other local addresses or set default value     location_location = @geoip.country(remote_ip)     if location_location != nil            @investor.country = location_location[2]     end   end     def new     @investor = investor.new   end    def create     @investor = investor.new(user_params)     if @investor.save         flash.now[:success] = "welcome, you're on way success!"         render "/static_pages/welcome"       investormailer.welcome_email(@investor).deliver_now     else         render 'new'     end   end    def update     if @investor.update_attributes(user_params)         flash[:success] = "updated"     else         render 'edit'     end   end    private      def user_params       params.require(:investor).permit(:name, :email, :country,                                    :phone)     end end 

i've had lot of success geocoder gem. works right out of box:

in gemfile, add:

gem geocoder

once bundle install, can queries against freegeoip (up 10,000 per hour) right in app. here's example console, using google's dns ip:

013 > results = geocoder.search("8.8.4.4") => [#<geocoder::result::freegeoip:0x007fa285fddfc0 @data={"ip"=>"8.8.4.4", "country_code"=>"us", "country_name"=>"united states", "region_code"=>"", "region_name"=>"", "city"=>"", "zip_code"=>"", "time_zone"=>"", "latitude"=>38, "longitude"=>-97, "metro_code"=>0}, @cache_hit=false>]  014 > results.first.data["country_name"] => "united states" 

there lot of other useful data geocoder gem provides well, can see. :)

i strongly recommend read entire geocoder readme give tips, suggestions on services can configure address lookup if wish, practices testing, etc.

i'd suggest once narrow down services want at, reading terms of services services (e.g. google maps, bing, etc.) readme geocoder gem isn't date policies.