Getting user timezone from IP in Django

10 years ago By Arulmurugan Rajaraman 3 comments

django python timezone tz ip freegeoip pytz

In my recent django project, I needed to show timestamps in user's timezone. I thought it will be easier. But it took some time for me to figure out it. I'm listing the steps I followed to achieve that. This may help someone.

Packages/Services used

Python requests - 2.8.1
pytz - 2015.7
API of freegeoip.net

Step 1: Get user timezone

You can get user timezone from freegeoip API by making a get request to the API.

	import requests

	....
	freegeoip_response = requests.get('http://freegeoip.net/json')
	freegeoip_response_json = freegeoip_response.json()
	user_time_zone = freegeoip_response_json['time_zone']

view raw get_timezone.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Step 2: Activate timezone

Then activate the timezone using the command

	import pytz
	from django.utils import timezone

	....
	timezone.activate(pytz.timezone(user_time_zone))

view raw activate_timezone.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

You can write a middleware to do this so that the timezone is activated. The middleware code can be like this.

	class UserTimezoneMiddleware(object):
	""" Middleware to check user timezone. """
	def process_request(self, request):
	user_time_zone = request.session.get('user_time_zone', None)
	try:
	if user_time_zone is None:
	freegeoip_response = requests.get('http://freegeoip.net/json/{0}'.format(ip))
	freegeoip_response_json = freegeoip_response.json()
	user_time_zone = freegeoip_response_json['time_zone']
	if user_time_zone:
	request.session['user_time_zone'] = user_time_zone
	timezone.activate(pytz.timezone(user_time_zone))
	except:
	pass
	return None

view raw middleware.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Freegeoip provides 10,000 requests per hour by default. So if you need more number of requests, you may have to try some other API.

Now we have implemented middleware to get and activate user timezone in django. Feel free to post your comments.