Background
My current projects make heavy use of GeoIP personalization, and as a result, I have had the opportunity to dig deep into Sitecore's IP Geolocation Service features, uncovering the gaps and figuring out ways to get around them.If you need help setting up the Geolocation Service, make sure you check out my post: http://sitecoreart.martinrayenglish.com/2015/08/setting-up-sitecores-geolocation-lookup.html
The Missing Area Code
Sitecore gives you a really nice set of rules to work with once you have the service enabled:
Looking above, you will see that the first rule is based on a visitor's area code.
Unfortunately, this rule doesn't work. After decompiling the GeoIP assembly, I was able to determine that the AreaCode property of the WhoIs object is never set in the MapGeoIpResponse processor:
Unfortunately, this rule doesn't work. After decompiling the GeoIP assembly, I was able to determine that the AreaCode property of the WhoIs object is never set in the MapGeoIpResponse processor:
And the rule that is supposed to use the area code:
The Missing Time Zone
One of my projects has a requirement around the ability to personalize based on the time of day.
When talking about this over lunch with some fellow Sitecore geeks, I got the "..doesn't Sitecore do that out of the box?" response.
At first thought, this seemed like a valid response, as Sitecore advertises that their IP Geolocation Service has the ability to identify a visitor's time zone.
Well, we know that there aren't any time-based rules shown by the Geolocation ruleset above, but if we have the person's time zone, we could at least use this information to conjure up some custom condition that will allow us to do this type of personalization.
Focusing on the GeoIpResponseProcessor again, you will notice that there is no time zone property on the WhoIs object. So, it's clear that we actually don't have a time zone to use.
After digging in a bit further, and confirming a few things with Sitecore support, I was able to determine that the JSON response from Sitecore's Geolocation service does actually contain the time zone information:
So, why wouldn't they make this available via the WhoIs object and API?
This seems a bit odd.
I registered a wish with my support ticket, so hopefully we will see this in a future release. Until then, we have to write a bit of code to peel off the value so that we can use it in our customization.
So the next order of business was to take the Olson time zone ID and convert it to a Windows time zone ID so that when I was ready to perform the local time calculation, it would be fairly easy using the .NET Framework's TimeZoneInfo class.
After a quick Google, I came across this Stack Overflow article that I based my conversion helper method on:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5996320/net-timezoneinfo-from-olson-time-zone
With these pieces on place, I had everything I needed to build out my time-based personalization rules!
Note: There is a dated module called Geo IP Tester on the Marketplace, but unfortunately it isn't compatible with Sitecore 8.x due to the changes in the API.
When talking about this over lunch with some fellow Sitecore geeks, I got the "..doesn't Sitecore do that out of the box?" response.
At first thought, this seemed like a valid response, as Sitecore advertises that their IP Geolocation Service has the ability to identify a visitor's time zone.
Well, we know that there aren't any time-based rules shown by the Geolocation ruleset above, but if we have the person's time zone, we could at least use this information to conjure up some custom condition that will allow us to do this type of personalization.
Focusing on the GeoIpResponseProcessor again, you will notice that there is no time zone property on the WhoIs object. So, it's clear that we actually don't have a time zone to use.
After digging in a bit further, and confirming a few things with Sitecore support, I was able to determine that the JSON response from Sitecore's Geolocation service does actually contain the time zone information:
This seems a bit odd.
I registered a wish with my support ticket, so hopefully we will see this in a future release. Until then, we have to write a bit of code to peel off the value so that we can use it in our customization.
Time Zone Fun
Getting the Time Zone
In order to get that time zone value from the service, I had to create a custom processor to grab the raw value from service response.Processor
Patch Configuration
Converting Olson to Windows Time
As you can see above, time zones from the service are in IANA time zone format (also known as Olson) as described here: https://dev.maxmind.com/faq/how-can-i-determine-the-timezone-of-a-website-visitor/So the next order of business was to take the Olson time zone ID and convert it to a Windows time zone ID so that when I was ready to perform the local time calculation, it would be fairly easy using the .NET Framework's TimeZoneInfo class.
After a quick Google, I came across this Stack Overflow article that I based my conversion helper method on:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5996320/net-timezoneinfo-from-olson-time-zone
With these pieces on place, I had everything I needed to build out my time-based personalization rules!
Bonus: Testing GeoIP Lookups
To make GeoIP Lookup testing easy, I created a processor that injects a mock ip address obtained from a setting, so you can verify that your dependent rules work as expected.Note: There is a dated module called Geo IP Tester on the Marketplace, but unfortunately it isn't compatible with Sitecore 8.x due to the changes in the API.
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