[google-app-engine] Google API for location, based on user IP address

I am looking for a way to get the user's current location (city) based on is IP address using the Google Maps APIs.

Something similar to http://freegeoip.net/json but only using the Google Maps APIs. Is this possible?

Google already appends location data to all requests coming into GAE (see Request Header documentation for go, java, php and python). You should be interested X-AppEngine-Country, X-AppEngine-Region, X-AppEngine-City and X-AppEngine-CityLatLong headers.

An example looks like this:

X-AppEngine-Country:US
X-AppEngine-Region:ca
X-AppEngine-City:norwalk
X-AppEngine-CityLatLong:33.902237,-118.081733

It looks like Google actively frowns on using IP-to-location mapping:

https://developers.google.com/maps/articles/geolocation?hl=en

That article encourages using the W3C geolocation API. I was a little skeptical, but it looks like almost every major browser already supports the geolocation API:

http://caniuse.com/geolocation

Here's a script that will use the Google API to acquire the users postal code and populate an input field.

function postalCodeLookup(input) {
    var head= document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0],
        script= document.createElement('script');
    script.src= '//maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false';
    head.appendChild(script);
    script.onload = function() {
        if (navigator.geolocation) {
            var a = input,
                fallback = setTimeout(function () {
                    fail('10 seconds expired');
                }, 10000);

            navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function (pos) {
                clearTimeout(fallback);
                var point = new google.maps.LatLng(pos.coords.latitude, pos.coords.longitude);
                new google.maps.Geocoder().geocode({'latLng': point}, function (res, status) {
                    if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK && typeof res[0] !== 'undefined') {
                        var zip = res[0].formatted_address.match(/,\s\w{2}\s(\d{5})/);
                        if (zip) {
                            a.value = zip[1];
                        } else fail('Unable to look-up postal code');
                    } else {
                        fail('Unable to look-up geolocation');
                    }
                });
            }, function (err) {
                fail(err.message);
            });
        } else {
            alert('Unable to find your location.');
        }
        function fail(err) {
            console.log('err', err);
            a.value('Try Again.');
        }
    };
}

You can adjust accordingly to acquire different information. For more info, check out the Google Maps API documentation.