Best way to get geo-location in Java [closed]

Question

What is the best way to get geo-location in Java (freely if possible)?

Update: Not from a GPS device. Basically how Firefox 3.5 / HTML 5 does it

Answer 1

An easy way is with GeoLite (http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/). Because it uses a local database no web service calls are needed and it's much faster for geocoding large numbers of IPs.

Here is how:

Add this Maven artifact:

<dependency>     <groupId>com.maxmind.geoip</groupId>     <artifactId>geoip-api</artifactId>     <version>1.2.11</version> </dependency> 

Download the geolocation data file from http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz

Unpack the file into any folder. Then do:

LookupService cl = new LookupService("/var/geolite/GeoLiteCity.dat",                     LookupService.GEOIP_MEMORY_CACHE | LookupService.GEOIP_CHECK_CACHE);  Location location = cl.getLocation("some ip address"); 

The result will be in the Location object in the latitude, longitude, city, region and countryCode properties.

Please take a look at their accuracy estimates to ensure it meets the needs of your project: http://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite_city_accuracy .

Answer 2

If you want to know how Firefox 3.5 (or Google Chrome) gets the geolocation, then please take a look here: How Google/Firefox Geolocation API works

Basically, what Firefox 3.5 (as well as Chrome) does is to get the list of nearby Wi-Fi networks and send that list using JSON to a Google webservice, which will then return the approximate coordinates.

By the way, there is no Java involved in this process. To get geolocation from Firefox/Chrome, you just call a few JavaScript methods. (I really hope that you know that Java is different from JavaScript)