wgeo

Wgeo, or "wi-fi geolocator", is a cross-platform C/C++ library for wifi-based device geolocation, utilising public wireless access point location databases.

compatibility

OS	Compatible
Windows 10	✅
Windows 7	✅
Linux*	✅
macOS	Soon

_{* - The linux implementation requires root permissions in order to perform a WAP scan.}

usage

Wgeo exposes a simple C API which abstracts the actual geolocation process. The API consists of two functions:

//sets the wgeo api host, route, and key
//successful if return value == WGEO_SUCCESS
int wgeo_set_api_req(char* host, char* route, char* api_key);

//scans WAPs, queries API, writes resultant latitude and longitude (+ result accuracy) to the supplied pointers
//successful if return value == WGEO_SUCCESS
int wgeo_get_location(double* lat, double* lon, double* accuracy);

If you would like to use wgeo as a shared library, ensure that you define the __WGEO_SHARED__ macro before including the header file (check the examples folder).

building

The wgeo repo provides bash and batch build scripts, which require CMake to be installed.

Usage:

# linux
./tools/build.sh (one of 'Debug', 'Release', or nothing)

@REM windows
tools\build (one of 'Debug', 'Release', or nothing)

installing

After compiling wgeo, copy the include/wgeo directory to somewhere your compiler can find it, and the contents of the lib directory to somewhere your linker can find them. Linux example:

sudo cp -r include/wgeo /usr/include
sudo cp lib/* /usr/lib

platform-independent external dependencies:

• Boost
• OpenSSL

linux additional dependencies:

• libiw-dev
• libiw30

testing

Wgeo utilises GTest for testing, and can be run using the bash or batch test scripts, which rely on ctest. To set up your environment, create the file tools/env.txt and write your Google geolocation API key to it.

To run the tests:

# linux
sudo ./tools/test.sh

@REM windows
tools\test

full usage example

More examples can be found in the examples directory.

#include <wgeo/wgeo.h>
#include <stdio.h>

#define API_HOST "https://www.googleapis.com"
#define API_ROUTE "/geolocation/v1/geolocate?key=%s"
#define MY_API_KEY "some_garbled_characters"


int main(int argc, char** argv){
    double lat = 0, lon = 0, accuracy = 0;
    int wgeo_status = 0;

    wgeo_status = wgeo_set_api_req(API_HOST,  API_ROUTE,  MY_API_KEY);
    if(wgeo_status != WGEO_SUCCESS) {
        perror("error: could not set up API request\n");
        return -1;
    }

    wgeo_status = wgeo_get_location(&lat, &lon, &accuracy);
    if(wgeo_status != WGEO_SUCCESS){
        perror("error: could not get location\n");
        return -1;
    }

    printf("latitude, longitude: (%f, %f)\n", lat, lon);
    printf("accuracy: %f\n", accuracy);
    return 0;
}