4 ms·

Show HN: IP Sidekick, geolocation API with additional metadata

8 points by hboon 9y ago

hboon 9y ago
One thing I want to do with IP Sidekick is to include additional information about the location it resolves to. For now, the result includes the national public holiday of the country it resolves to. This should work for the next few hours of Aug 17: $ curl https://ipsidekick.com/5.189.201.130 { "countryCode" : "ID", "country" : "Indonesia", "holiday" : "Independence Day", "timeZoneName" : "Asia/Jakarta", "ip" : "5.189.201.130", "gmtOffset" : "GMT+7:00" } I'm planning to add more data types. Welcome any feedback.
nkkollaw 9y ago
Very cool. I think 1 request per minute is way too low for any sort of usage, though. That made me dismiss the project immediately, ex. I won't even try it because I would never be able to use it in production anyway. If I was you, I wouldn't offer a free tier at all if you can't handle a standard load (30,000/day+), and just offer a 14-day trial. I would base tiers on the number of requests with a minimum of 30,000/day, but most importantly on the amount of data you receive: tier 1 only the country, tier 2 GMT offset and everything else. I don't think it's a product that needs support, it's easy and once I set it up I'll never touch it again, so I would not pay premium for support. Good luck, congrats on releasing!
- hboon 9y ago
  Good point. Thanks for the feedback.
b44rd 9y ago
Cool stuff. Adding lat/lng to the dataset as well would be nice as well. Alternatively a lat/lng that can be associated to the country can be an idea. For example by using something like https://developers.google.com/public-data/docs/canonical/countries_csv https://developers.google.com/public-data/docs/canonical/cou...
- hboon 9y ago
  Yes, I plan to include a lat/long somewhere down the road when I can get it to be more accurate. Slightly related, what can someone do with the lat/long in that data set? (since there's only a canonical lat/long for each country)
  - b44rd 9y ago
    Great! Lat/lng would of course be best implemented if kind of accurate. Ipinfo.io seems to do this quite well. I would happily use this to detect if somebody tries to spoof the info provided from window.gelocation.get/watch, whic is pretty sweet to utilize for anything that relates to maps. :)
ffumarola 9y ago
What is the advantage of this over something like MaxMind or NetAcuity? Thanks!
- hboon 9y ago
  There're 2 ways to access a geolocation service: 1) Secure your own database(s) and offer it as an internal library/API 2) Use a hosted version. IP Sidekick offers the latter option. The advantage over running your own version is more predictable Opex, both money and effort — if operate your own, you'd have to find source(s), make sure they are updated and make sure the services remain up. With IP Sidekick, you pay a certain amount monthly, and it's a relatively simple API to use, so there's 0 maintenance and ongoing effort. Another advantage is I'm supplementing additional data other than what other geolocation services offer. eg. the results now include the public holiday for that day in that country. Planning to add more.

8 points by hboon 9y ago

One thing I want to do with IP Sidekick is to include additional information about the location it resolves to. For now, the result includes the national public holiday of the country it resolves to. This should work for the next few hours of Aug 17: $ curl https://ipsidekick.com/5.189.201.130 { "countryCode" : "ID", "country" : "Indonesia", "holiday" : "Independence Day", "timeZoneName" : "Asia/Jakarta", "ip" : "5.189.201.130", "gmtOffset" : "GMT+7:00" } I'm planning to add more data types. Welcome any feedback.

nkkollaw 9y ago

Very cool. I think 1 request per minute is way too low for any sort of usage, though. That made me dismiss the project immediately, ex. I won't even try it because I would never be able to use it in production anyway. If I was you, I wouldn't offer a free tier at all if you can't handle a standard load (30,000/day+), and just offer a 14-day trial. I would base tiers on the number of requests with a minimum of 30,000/day, but most importantly on the amount of data you receive: tier 1 only the country, tier 2 GMT offset and everything else. I don't think it's a product that needs support, it's easy and once I set it up I'll never touch it again, so I would not pay premium for support. Good luck, congrats on releasing!

hboon 9y ago
Good point. Thanks for the feedback.

b44rd 9y ago

Cool stuff. Adding lat/lng to the dataset as well would be nice as well. Alternatively a lat/lng that can be associated to the country can be an idea. For example by using something like https://developers.google.com/public-data/docs/canonical/countries_csv https://developers.google.com/public-data/docs/canonical/cou...

hboon 9y ago
Yes, I plan to include a lat/long somewhere down the road when I can get it to be more accurate. Slightly related, what can someone do with the lat/long in that data set? (since there's only a canonical lat/long for each country)
- b44rd 9y ago
  Great! Lat/lng would of course be best implemented if kind of accurate. Ipinfo.io seems to do this quite well. I would happily use this to detect if somebody tries to spoof the info provided from window.gelocation.get/watch, whic is pretty sweet to utilize for anything that relates to maps. :)

ffumarola 9y ago

What is the advantage of this over something like MaxMind or NetAcuity? Thanks!

hboon 9y ago
There're 2 ways to access a geolocation service: 1) Secure your own database(s) and offer it as an internal library/API 2) Use a hosted version. IP Sidekick offers the latter option. The advantage over running your own version is more predictable Opex, both money and effort — if operate your own, you'd have to find source(s), make sure they are updated and make sure the services remain up. With IP Sidekick, you pay a certain amount monthly, and it's a relatively simple API to use, so there's 0 maintenance and ongoing effort. Another advantage is I'm supplementing additional data other than what other geolocation services offer. eg. the results now include the public holiday for that day in that country. Planning to add more.