IP to Country component for Visual Basic for Windows

ActiveSocket is a Network Communication component for Windows Developers. It runs on any 32 bit and 64 bit Windows Platform, incl. Windows 7, Windows 2008, Windows 2003, Windows 2000, Windows Vista and Windows XP.
It features many IP protocols, incl.: SSH (Secure Shell), RSH (Remote Shell), HTTP(s), FTP, ICMP Ping, NTP, SNMP v1/v2c (Get,GetNext,Set), SNMP MIB translation, SNMP Trap Sender, SNMP Trap Receiver, Telnet, DNS, TCP, UDP, IP-to-Country, Wake-On-LAN and more. Samples are included many popular development platforms, incl. Visual C# .NET, Visual Basic .NET, ASP .NET, Visual Basic, Visual C/C++, ASP, Java, Javascript, PHP, Borland Delphi, Borland C++ Builder, ColdFusion.

ActiveSocket can be well integrated into Visual Basic environments. This document describes how the ActiveSocket Toolkit can be integrated into Visual Basic 5.x/6.x projects.

Step 1: Download and install the ActiveSocket Toolkit

Download the ActiveSocket Toolkit from the ActiveXperts Download Site and start the installation. The installation guides you through the installation process.

Step 2: Create a new Visual Basic project

Launch 'Microsoft Visual Basic' from the Start menu, and choose 'New' from the 'File Menu'. The 'New Project' dialog appears. Select 'Standard Exe' and click 'OK':

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Step 3: Refer to the ActiveSocket Library and create the objects

A new Project is created, with a blank form.

First, you must add a reference to ActiveSocket in the project to be able to use the object. To do so, choose 'References...' from the 'Project' menu. In the 'References' dialog that pops up, enable the 'ActiveSocket 3.1 Type Library' reference as shown in the following picture:

(Click on the picture to enlarge)

Click 'OK' to close the 'References...' dialog.

Then, select the Project form and choose 'View Code' from the context menu:

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On top of your code, declare the following object:

   Public objIPtoCountry As ASOCKETLib.IPtoCountry

Step 4: Create the object

From the Code window, select 'Form'. The Private Sub 'Form_Load()' will be displayed now. In the 'Form Load' function, create the object in the following way: 

   Set objIPtoCountry = CreateObject("ActiveXperts.IPtoCountry")

Step 5: Perform a simple IP to country lookup

You can now lookup IP addresses.

The following code shows how create a siple IP to country lookup utility using Visual Basic :

Option Explicit

Private Declare Function GetTempPath Lib "kernel32" Alias "GetTempPathA" (ByVal nBufferLength As Long, ByVal lpBuffer As String) As Long
Private Const MAX_PATH = 260

Sub SetDefaultLogFile()
  Dim Buffer As String
  
  Buffer = Space(MAX_PATH)

  If GetTempPath(MAX_PATH, Buffer) <> 0 Then
    txtLogfile.Text = Left$(Buffer, InStr(Buffer, vbNullChar) - 1) & "IPtoCountryLog.txt"
  Else
    txtLogfile.Text = "C:\IPtoCountryLog.txt"
  End If
End Sub

Private Sub cmdQuery_Click()
  Dim objSocket

  Set objSocket = CreateObject("ActiveXperts.IPtoCountry")
 
  objSocket.LogFile = txtLogfile.Text
 
  objSocket.Query

  txtCountryName.Text = objSocket.CountryName
  txtCountryCode.Text = objSocket.CountryCode

  txtResults.Text = objSocket.LastError & " : " & objSocket.GetErrorDescription(objSocket.LastError)
End Sub

Private Sub cmdViewLogfile_Click()
  Shell "notepad " & txtLogfile.Text, vbNormalFocus
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Load()
  SetDefaultLogFile
End Sub

There are many working samples included with the product. You can also find them on the ActiveXperts FTP site: ftp.activexperts-labs.com/samples/asocket.