Geolocate Your World: A Beginner’s Guide to Getting GPS Coordinates with Python

Puneet Kumawat
2 min readSep 9, 2023

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Introduction:

Understanding the geographical location of a device or an IP address can be a valuable asset in various applications, from localizing users on a map to personalizing content delivery. In this tutorial, we will explore how to retrieve GPS coordinates using Python and the Geopy library. By the end of this guide, you’ll have the knowledge to harness the power of geolocation in your projects.

Prerequisites:

Before diving into the code, ensure you have the following prerequisites:

  • Python 3.x installed on your system.
  • A working internet connection.
import json
from urllib.request import urlopen

# Access the IP address information using ipinfo.io
response = urlopen("http://ipinfo.io/json")

# Load the JSON data into a Python dictionary
data = json.load(response)

# Extract latitude and longitude from the 'loc' field
lat, lon = data['loc'].split(',')

# Display the obtained GPS coordinates
print("Latitude:", lat)
print("Longitude:", lon)

Exploring the Code:

  1. We start by importing the necessary modules: json for working with JSON data and urlopen from urllib.request to fetch data from the specified URL.
  2. We access IP address information by making an HTTP request to the “http://ipinfo.io/json" URL using urlopen.
  3. The response data is loaded into a Python dictionary named data.
  4. We extract the latitude and longitude from the ‘loc’ field of the data dictionary using the split method.
  5. Finally, we display the obtained GPS coordinates.

Conclusion:

With just a few lines of Python code, you can retrieve GPS coordinates based on an IP address. This is a fundamental step in many location-based applications, such as weather apps, delivery services, and more. Understanding geolocation opens up a world of possibilities for tailoring services and content to your users’ specific locations. Start exploring the power of geolocation in your Python projects today! 🌍🔍 #Geolocation #PythonProgramming

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