The website I'm working on uses HTML5 geolocation api. It works fine, but I need to know if the feature has been authorized.
navigator.geolocation only tells if the feature is available. What I want to know is whether the user has enabled it already. Basically, I need to know if the browser will request permission to use the feature. Is it possible?

The website I'm working on uses HTML5 geolocation api. It works fine, but I need to know if the feature has been authorized.
navigator.geolocation only tells if the feature is available. What I want to know is whether the user has enabled it already. Basically, I need to know if the browser will request permission to use the feature. Is it possible?

• javascript
• w3c-geolocation

2 Answers 2

If the user does not allow your app to use the Geolocation API the methods getCurrentPosition and watchPosition will return an PositionError object via the error callback:

void getCurrentPosition(successCallback,
                        errorCallback,
                        options);

long watchPosition(successCallback,
                   errorCallback,
                   options);

The PositionError looks like:

PositionError {
    code;
    message;
};

where the possibles values of code are:

PositionError.PERMISSION_DENIED = 1;
PositionError.POSITION_UNAVAILABLE = 2;
PositionError.TIMEOUT = 3;

And more specific:

• PERMISSION_DENIED (numeric value 1) The location acquisition process failed because the document does not have permission to use the Geolocation API.

The documentation here.

There is no check for permanent authorization.
The only thing you can do imho is try to "guess" if the user has authorized by estimate time.
For example:

• more than 1,5 seconds to retrieve geolocation -> probably user got to click interface and give auth

• less than 500ms -> pretty sure user already give auth