Redirect Web Visitors by Country in VB.NET

Ivy Tang
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There are times when it is useful to redirect a visitor to different default web page based on the visitor's country of origin. One practical usage is to redirect visitor to web page with the language recognized by the visitor. This article shows you how by using .NET component, it can be done.

Let us take a simple case study. Company XYZ is multi-national company with major customers from United States and Japan. The company official website is developed in both English and Japanese languages. The default page is in English language and visitor can switch to Japanese by changing the default language option. There exists a potential problem when a Japanese visitor does not understand English and it could not navigate the web site. So let us develop a simple solution to help Company XYZ redirecting all Internet traffic from country Japan to the Japanese language site. Meanwhile it drives the rest traffic to English site.

In this example, we use a fully functional IP2Location .NET component available athttp://www.ip2location.net/download/IP2LocationDotNetComponent.ZIP to query country by visitor's IP address. Firstly, install the IP2Location .NET component. The IP2Location .NET component will be installed in your local drive. Next, get the IP2Location.DLL .NET component and sample database from the directory, ie. c:\Program Files\IP2Location by default. You need to add a reference to this component from your Visual Studio web project. A copy of this component will be copied into /bin directory under the project. For unregistered component, there is a random 5-second delay in one out of ten queries.

Let's assume the English web page as index_en.htm and Japanese web page as index_jp.htm. We implement a simple script default.asp to detect visitor's country of origin. If the visitor is from Japan, then redirect him/her to index_jp.htm, otherwise index_en.htm. Simple? Here is the code and the comments serve as explanation default.asp.

Sample Codes in VB.NET Webform.

Imports IP2Location
Private Sub Query(ByVal strIPAddress As String)
        Dim oIPResult As New IP2Location.IPResult
        Try
            If strIPAddress <> "" Then
                IP2Location.Component.IPDatabasePath = "C:\\Program Files\\IP2Location\\Database\\IP-COUNTRY.SAMPLE.BIN"
                oIPResult = IP2Location.Component.IPQuery(strIPAddress)
                Select Case oIPResult.Status
                    Case "OK"
                        If oIPResult.CountryShort = "JP" Then
                            ' Visitor is from Japan
                            ' Redirect the URL to index_jp.htm
                            Response.Redirect("index_jp.htm")
                        Else
                            ' Visitor is not from Japan
                            ' Redirect the URL to index_en.htm
                            Response.Redirect("index_en.htm")
                        End If
                    Case "EMPTY_IP_ADDRESS"
                        Response.Write("IP Address cannot be blank.")
                    Case "INVALID_IP_ADDRESS"
                        Response.Write("Invalid IP Address.")
                    Case "MISSING_FILE"
                        Response.Write("Invalid Database Path.")
                End Select
            Else
                Response.Write("IP Address cannot be blank.")
            End If
        Catch ex As Exception
            Response.Write(ex.Message)
        Finally
            oIPResult = Nothing
        End Try
    End Sub

Sample Codes in C# Webform

using IP2Location;
private void Query(string strIPAddress)
          {
                IPResult oIPResult = new IP2Location.IPResult();
                try
                {
                     if (strIPAddress != "")
                     {
                           IP2Location.Component.IPDatabasePath = "C:\\Program Files\\IP2Location\\Database\\IP-COUNTRY.SAMPLE.BIN";
                          oIPResult = IP2Location.Component.IPQuery(strIPAddress);
                           switch(oIPResult.Status.ToString())
                           {
                                case "OK":
                                      if (oIPResult.CountryShort == "JP")
                                      {
                                           Response.Redirect("index_jp.htm");
                                      }
                                       else
                                      {
                                          Response.Redirect("index_en.htm");
                                      }
                                      break;
                                case "EMPTY_IP_ADDRESS":
                                      Response.Write("IP Address cannot be blank.");
                                      break;
                                case "INVALID_IP_ADDRESS":
                                      Response.Write("Invalid IP Address.");
                                      break;
                                case "MISSING_FILE":
                                      Response.Write("Invalid Database Path.");
                                      break;
                           }
                     }
                     else
                     {
                           Response.Write("IP Address cannot be blank.");
                     }
                }
                catch(Exception ex)
                {
                     Response.Write(ex.Message);
                }
                finally
                {
                     oIPResult = null;
                }
          }