Need help to get search result by Geo Location, php script

Hi, everyone. I'm trying to create a code to get a search result for visitor's location. The website I work with grabs the data from the database, and display the search result. Visitors can filter this result by US states. What I would like to do is, when visitors open the search result webpage, it should show them result according to their location without log in or registration as many sites do.
I made some small research, and I would like to make it as simple as possible.
I've grabbed the script, but I have a difficulty to integrate it, and run query. I'm pretty new in php development, so I will be glad if someone could help me in codding and some ideas. Thanks in advance.

<?php

       $ip = getenv("REMOTE_ADDR");

       print_r(geoCheckIP($ip));

       //Array ( [domain] => dslb-094-219-040-096.pools.arcor-ip.net [country] => DE - Germany [state] => Hessen [town] => Erzhausen )


       //Get an array with geoip-infodata

       function geoCheckIP($ip)

       {

               //check, if the provided ip is valid

               if(!filter_var($ip, FILTER_VALIDATE_IP))

               {

                       throw new InvalidArgumentException("IP is not valid");

               }


               //contact ip-server

               $response=@file_get_contents('http://www.netip.de/search?query='.$ip);

               if (empty($response))

               {

                       throw new InvalidArgumentException("Error contacting Geo-IP-Server");

               }


               //Array containing all regex-patterns necessary to extract ip-geoinfo from page

               $patterns=array();

               $patterns["domain"] = '#Domain: (.*?) #i';

               $patterns["country"] = '#Country: (.*?) #i';

               $patterns["state"] = '#State/Region: (.*?)<br#i';

               $patterns["town"] = '#City: (.*?)<br#i';


               //Array where results will be stored

               $ipInfo=array();


               //check response from ipserver for above patterns

               foreach ($patterns as $key => $pattern)

               {

                       //store the result in array

                       $ipInfo[$key] = preg_match($pattern,$response,$value) && !empty($value[1]) ? $value[1] : 'not found';

               }


               return $ipInfo['state'];

       }


?>

There is some issue with print_r function, it doesn't print any info. The point is return $ipInfo by state to use it in sql query.
What do you think about it?

Thanks

Edited by Orjan, 17 June 2011 - 12:56 AM.
Add PHP tags when posting php code!