How to Build a Nearby Golf Course Finder Using IP Geolocation and Python

A developer tutorial published on DEV Community demonstrates how to build a location-aware golf course finder using IP geolocation and a publicly available dataset of over 16,000 US golf courses. The project uses the IP Geolocation API via RapidAPI to automatically detect a visitor's latitude and longitude from their IP address, eliminating the need for manual location input. A minimal Flask backend then applies the haversine formula to calculate distances between the user's detected location and courses stored in a local CSV file. The endpoint returns the five nearest courses along with their names, cities, and distances in miles, formatted as JSON. The frontend can then render these results on an interactive map using a library such as Leaflet.