Magento - How I can Run Store by Country by GeoIP? - magento

Question

I want run store by IP of the customer.
In the backend of Magento, the user may configure the concret Store to load per country.
Taking a glance, I see the method at class Mage_Core_Model_App
public function run($params)
{
$options = isset($params['options']) ? $params['options'] : array();
$this->baseInit($options);
if ($this->_cache->processRequest()) {
$this->getResponse()->sendResponse();
} else {
$this->_initModules();
$this->loadAreaPart(Mage_Core_Model_App_Area::AREA_GLOBAL, Mage_Core_Model_App_Area::PART_EVENTS);
if ($this->_config->isLocalConfigLoaded()) {
//$scopeCode = isset($params['scope_code']) ? $params['scope_code'] : '';
//===============custom scope by country======================
$scopeCode = Mage::helper('custom/module')->getStoreByGeoip();
//===============custom scope by country======================
$scopeType = isset($params['scope_type']) ? $params['scope_type'] : 'store';
$this->_initCurrentStore($scopeCode, $scopeType);
$this->_initRequest();
Mage_Core_Model_Resource_Setup::applyAllDataUpdates();
}
$this->getFrontController()->dispatch();
}
return $this;
}
In my progress to get a good solution, I thought another alternative.
In the index.php write the next code:
Mage::app();
Mage::Helper('custom/helper')->getRunCodeByGeoio();
Mage::run($mageRunCode, $mageRunType);
I thinks this haven´t dangerous of performance because this method only create object if you not have before
/**
* Get initialized application object.
*
* #param string $code
* #param string $type
* #param string|array $options
* #return Mage_Core_Model_App
*/
public static function app($code = '', $type = 'store', $options = array())
{
if (null === self::$_app) {
self::$_app = new Mage_Core_Model_App();
self::setRoot();
self::$_events = new Varien_Event_Collection();
self::$_config = new Mage_Core_Model_Config();
Varien_Profiler::start('self::app::init');
self::$_app->init($code, $type, $options);
Varien_Profiler::stop('self::app::init');
self::$_app->loadAreaPart(Mage_Core_Model_App_Area::AREA_GLOBAL, Mage_Core_Model_App_Area::PART_EVENTS);
}
return self::$_app;
}
And my question is......
Are this the best approach for get the solution??
I think is very dangerous modify Mage_Core_Model_App even using rewrite
I don´t have any event at tier
Another option is made the business in the index.php but lost the management by the backend
Searching...., found a extension that cover many of my requirements,
http://www.mageworx.com/store-and-currency-auto-switcher-magento-extension.html
then I'll buy this or made a similar extension.

Answer 1

You shyould never touch any core files when developing with Magento, or any other application if you can avoid it.
Doing this will mean possible future upgrades will overwrite your changes and break your store.
The simplest way would be to do everything index.php as this is the entry point where the store is selected anyway, all you are doing is selecting the store on different criteria (ie IP address).
One simple way would be to use a free library, such as maxmind GeoLite: http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geolite
You can either load an apache module, or via a pecl extensions, or even plain PHP.
This will return you the iso country code for the country of your visitor.
You could then name your stores with a country iso code for the store code, and this will make it really simple to load the correct store depending on IP
something simple like this:
$countryCode = getUsersCountryCode(); // which ever method you use in here...
$stores = array(
'gb',
'us',
'fr',
);
if(in_array(countryCode, $stores)) {
Mage::run(countryCode, 'store');
}
else {
Mage::run($mageRunCode, $mageRunType);
}
You could of course make it into a Magento extensions, but this is by far the simplest way. You could even get a list of the countries/stores from Magento rather than hard coding them if you required.