VpnHood.Net.IpLocations.Assets.Ip2LocationLite 8.2.858

VpnHood.Assets.IpLocations

The IP2Location LITE country database as an inert asset package: data plus MSBuild targets, and no compiled code. Nothing in your codebase can take a reference on it — it is a store of bytes, not a library.

<PackageReference Include="VpnHood.Net.IpLocations.Assets.Ip2LocationLite" />

That is the whole integration. The package's targets place IpLocations.zip where your app's platform keeps files, and you read it from the asset path iplocations/IpLocations.zip. That path is the entire contract between this package and your code.

Why it is data and not an embedded resource

.NET for Android keeps assemblies once per CPU architecture. A 14.6 MB database compiled into a DLL is therefore carried once per ABI — three or four times over in a multi-ABI package. Placed as data it is carried once, in the part of the package Android does not split by architecture.

Reading it as a stream rather than a byte[] also keeps those 14.6 MB out of the managed heap: the zip's entries are stored, not deflated, so a reader seeks straight to the country it wants.

Where the file lands

The targets live in buildTransitive/, so an app that reaches this package through another package or project gets the file placed just the same, at any depth. Only an app's build places it; a library that merely passes the reference along gets no 14.6 MB copy in its bin.

Reading it

Windows, Linux, iOS, tvOS, Mac Catalyst

An ordinary file, under AppContext.BaseDirectory:

var path = Path.Combine(AppContext.BaseDirectory, "iplocations", "IpLocations.zip");
using var zip = new ZipArchive(File.OpenRead(path), ZipArchiveMode.Read);

Android

On Android the asset is not a file. It is an entry of the .apk, reachable only through AssetManager, and the stream it hands out is forward-only — which ZipArchive cannot use, because it reads the central directory at the end of the file and then seeks back to each entry.

So copy it into memory and read it from there:

using var source = context.Assets.Open("iplocations/IpLocations.zip");
var memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
source.CopyTo(memoryStream);
memoryStream.Position = 0;

using var zip = new ZipArchive(memoryStream, ZipArchiveMode.Read);

The copy costs the database's full size in memory for as long as you hold it, so open it when a lookup actually needs it and dispose it afterwards, rather than keeping one alive for the life of the app.

AssetManager.OpenFd will tell you the entry's byte offset and length inside the .apk, which tempts you to read it in place with no copy at all. Two conditions have to hold for that to be correct: the entry must be stored rather than deflated, or there is no file descriptor to open; and the offset must index into the file you think it does, which is ApplicationInfo.SourceDir for a normal install but not necessarily for one delivered in a split or an asset pack. The second is the dangerous one — if it is wrong the read does not fail, it returns whatever bytes lie at that offset. Weigh that before choosing it over a copy.

What is in the zip

One entry per country, named by its lower-case ISO code (tr.ips), holding that country's IP ranges already sorted and unified, plus _checksum.txt naming the build of the data. Every entry is stored uncompressed.

Licensing — read this before you ship

This package is licensed in two parts, because it holds two different kinds of thing.

Both licence texts ship inside the package, under licenses/, and LICENSE sets out which applies to what. The data is a converted form of the IP2Location LITE database, so anyone redistributing it or an adaptation of it carries the ShareAlike obligation forward.

The attribution you owe

IP2Location LITE requires that all sites, advertising materials and documentation mentioning features or the use of this database display this acknowledgment:

[Your site name or product name] uses the IP2Location LITE database for IP geolocation.

Referencing this package does not discharge that for you. It lands on your product — its about screen, its documentation, or its website — with your own name in place of the bracketed part.

Data source

This package includes IP geolocation data from IP2Location LITE. IP2Location LITE is Copyright (c) 2001-2024 Hexasoft Development Sdn. Bhd. All Rights Reserved. IP2Location is a registered trademark of Hexasoft Development Sdn Bhd.