Native IP2Location library for node.js

This library is a complete re-write of IP2LOCATION database client. Built for speed.

Data structures learnt from the IP2Location C library:

http://www.ip2location.com/developers/c-7

Sample binary databases are available here.

Installation

npm install ip2location-native

Usage

    Location = require('ip2location-native')
    location = new Location('path/to/ip2location_database.bin', 'mmap')

    location.query('8.8.8.8')
    { country_short: ....,
      country_long: ....,
      region: ....,
      city: ....,
      latitude: ....,
      longitude: ....,
      elevation: .... }

    # retrieve only country short, latitude and longitude
    location.query('8.8.8.8', Location.COUNTRY_SHORT | Location.LATITUDE | Location.LONGITUDE)
    { country_short: ....,
      latitude: ....,
      longitude: .... }

    # query binary ip
    location.query( new Buffer([8,8,4,4]) )

    # free resources
    location.close()

Caching

The second, optional constructor argument configures database access mode. The default mode is "file" - without caching. It conserves memory but reading is done with blocking IO.

• "cache" loads the whole database into a local memory:

    location = new Location('path/to/ip2location_database.bin', 'cache')
    location.mode == "cache"

• "mmap" maps database file into memory shared between processes:

    location = new Location('path/to/ip2location_database.bin', 'mmap')
    location.mode == "mmap"

• "shared" loads whole database into named shared memory:

    location = new Location('path/to/ip2location_database.bin', 'shared')
    location.mode == "shared"

Every other process calling new Location(dbname, "shared") will try to re-open existing shared memory.

The default name used for the shared memory is "/IP2location_Shm". However you are free to pick another (the name must begin with a slash - "/")

    location = new Location('path/to/ip2location_database.bin', '/MyDatabase1')
    location.mode == "shared"
    location.info().sharedname == "/MyDatabase1"

On POSIX sytems:

A call to location.close() will not delete the shared memory, it will only detach process from it. To delete the shared memory call:

    location.deleteShared()

Before close(). When deleteShared is called, and if any other process is attached to the shared memory, the function will only delete the inode of the shared memory. The other processes will continue to use the shared memory and it will be freed only after the last process is detached from it (closes database).

Please refer to shm_open and shm_unlink man pages for more info.

On Windows:

Last process calling location.close() will delete the shared memory.

Performance

On tested system the library in default IO mode with IP2LOCATION-LITE-5 database spends on average 25µs per ip lookup returning all available record entities. With caching enabled it speeds up to 5µs / lookup (~200 000 / s).

This is about at least 200 times faster then the pure js IP2Location module. Further speed up is available by limiting the set of fields retrieved from the database with the second argument to query().

node test/bench IP2LOCATION-DATABASE.BIN access_mode iterations mask

Resilient database access

The library takes additional precaution when dealing with database files. The format verification routine prevents accessing wrong format or corrupted files.

Drop-in replacement

The drop-in module allows you to replace the official IP2Location library without touching your code, except for:

    var ip2location = require('ip2location-native/dropin')

    ip2location.IP2Location_init('path/to/ip2location_database.bin')
    ip2location.IP2Location_get_all('8.8.8.8')

Database dictionary

Do you want to know all available unique location property values? Sorted, grouped by property type and structured? No problem. With this module it's possible to dump database dictionaries using createDictionary([FIELD_MASK]) method.

  var dict = location.createDictionary(Location.COUNTRY_LONG|Location.REGION|Location.CITY)
  dict._index.indexOf('PL') == 174
  dict.PL.country_long == 'Poland'
  dict.PL.region._index.indexOf('Mazowieckie') == 6
  dict.PL.region.Mazowieckie.indexOf('Warsaw') == 251

Notes

This module was tested on Linux (x64), OS X and MS Windows (x64 and x86) with node v6, v7, v8, v9, v10, v11 and v12.

Licence

LGPL-3.0