How to redirect visitors based on country in Nginx

We can do it by GeoIP module and MaxMind free database.

MaxMind has new version database GeoLite2 and it only support CSV and mmdb format.

ngx_http_geoip2_module can support mmdb format, but when I checked my Nginx by nginx -V and I found that it was compiled with with-http-geoip_module=dynamic .

I didn’t want to reinstall Nginx, so I found a tool that can convert CSV to dat format.

GeoIP Module

Before to prepare GeoIP database, I have to enable geoip module in nginx.

1. install module:

sudo yum install nginx-mod-http-geoip -y

2. modify nginx.conf

include /usr/share/nginx/modules/mod-http-geoip.conf;
or 
include /usr/share/nginx/modules/*.conf;

Now, my Nginx has supported geoip module.

Geo IP Database — GeoIP.dat

We can get geo ip database by package installation.

sudo yum install geoip geoip-devel -y

It will install the database in /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat but it is out of date.

We can download the latest database from MaxMind.

But as mentioned at the beginning, the latest database only has CSV and mmdb format.

I find geolite2legacy that can convert GeoLite2 database to the old format.

geolite2legacy use python to do it. In my environment, I need to install ipaddr and pygeoip to execute it.

sudo yum install python27-ipaddr -y
sudo pip install pygeoip
# To download GeoLite2-Country-CSV.zip from MaxMind before run this command.
./geolite2legacy.py -i GeoLite2-Country-CSV.zip -f geoname2fips.csv -o GeoIP.dat

Move output GeoIP.dat to /usr/share/GeoIP/ to follow the geoip package.

Configuring nginx

Open /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and place this in the http{} block, before any include lines.

geoip_country /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat;
map $geoip_country_code $redirect_country {
    default no;
    NO yes;
}

This allows all countries but Norway set to no. (Country codes list: https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/codes/iso3166/ )

Now, we get $redirect_country variable, but we do not redirect in actually.

Put this in server{} block to do it.

if ($redirect_country = yes) {
    rewrite ^ https://www.lightda.no$request_uri break;
}

This will redirect the visitors from Norway to another website.

Don’t forget to reload or restart Nginx to make these configuration work.

It’s easy and funny and I hope this note will help you.

ps. All the configurations are tested in Nginx 1.14.1.

References

• https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/geolite2/
• https://serverfault.com/questions/913792/geoip-redirect-with-https
• https://www.howtoforge.com/nginx-how-to-block-visitors-by-country-with-the-geoip-module-debian-ubuntu
• https://github.com/sherpya/geolite2legacy
• https://github.com/leev/ngx_http_geoip2_module