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IPGeoLocation With MetaQuest

 

Each MetaQuest user needs to have their own free personal API_KEY in order to access geoLocations from the internet. There are many providers available. MetaQuest uses this one:  https://ipgeolocation.io

as it has a very good free plan that we can use,..

“We have a hard limit of 1000 requests per day on our Free plan”

 

This is a reasonable and practical limit for users of this app. However, if you are not paying attention you may go over it. The app does display a toast message with the number of requests so far for the day every time you make a request. You can also keep track by keeping your browser running in background, with your ipgeolocation.io dashboard view open. You will get an information email from the ipgeolocation.io server if you go over the limit. Please avoid that. We do not wish to abuse our privilege.

 

 

To get signed up, browse to https://ipgeolocation.io   Select the Get Free API Access button, circled in red →
Choose your sign up credentials → ●       Google email or ●       Github account or ●       Other email It does not matter which you choose or what email account you use here.   It is useful to save your login credentials when prompted. It makes subsequent logins easier.
For signing in, if you had chosen to save your login credentials at signup, at this prompt you just have to select/tap in the email Address / Password area and the system will fill in your login credentials.
This view is called your “Dashboard”. It may magically appear after you login or you may have to select it using that more icon [the 3 horizontal bars in the blue on the right side].   Select the copy icon in the red circle to copy your API_KEY to the system clipboard. The attached horizontal line is simply covering up my personal API_KEY 🙂   After you select the copy icon, a message will appear like red-underlined →  and you should click the associated red circled OK →
The API_KEY will stay saved in the system clipboard until you overwrite it, perhaps by doing a Select | Copy in another app. Start the MetaQuest app and select MetaQuest from the bottom menu →

 

Select DEEP CRAWL →
Select Set/Reset API_KEY from the popup menu →
The message Paste API_KEY here appears→   Long press on this message→
The word Paste with a vertical ellipsis appears like this → or perhaps like in the next picture depending on older/newer  device →
Tap that word Paste, a Toast message will momentarily appear on older devices at the top of the view on newer devices at the bottom, indicating that the API_KEY has been stored →

 

When you tap Paste, MetaQuest immediately saves that API_KEY into a file in a private area [SharedPreferences] of your device. Usually, this data will persist until MetaQuest is uninstalled or until it is deleted by the user. If it ever becomes deleted or corrupted somehow, you can simply follow this process again to reinstate it.

 

Also in that file is GEO_COUNT, the count of the number of calls to api.getGeolocation, and the day part of a DATE field so MetaQuest can check at each startup if this is a new day and thence reset the count to zero. This process may not correspond with the algorithm used by ipgeolocation.io to determine the start of a new day for counting. If there is a concern you can consult your Dashboard at ipgeolocation.io for an accurate count that is updated every 20 minutes.

 

Mick

MultiMIPS@gmail.com