My computers are sitting behind a router/firewall. How do I programmatically find out what my external IP address is. I can use http://www.whatsmyip.org/ for ad-hoc queries, but the TOS don't allow for automated checks.
Any ideas?
+2
A:
Unfortunately there is no easy way to do it.
I would use a site like www.whatsmyip.org and parse the output.
checkip.dyndns.com returns a very simple HTML file which looks like this:
<html> <head> <title>Current IP Check</title> </head> <body> Current IP Address: 84.151.156.163 </body> </html>
This should be very easy to parse. Moreover the site is exists for about ten years. There is hope that it will be around for a while.
Ludwig Weinzierl
2009-07-17 22:00:57
+2
A:
Here is an API designed specifically for this kind of thing. It gives you nice parseable XML and provides lots of useful information.
Sam152
2009-07-17 22:02:05
XML! That's crazy. Just return a string. If you really need the whole request, HTTP headers are designed to be easily parsed to begin with.
guns
2009-07-17 22:18:57
XML response is great, make parsing zero effort, which is better then easily parsed. Here's my one liner: ([xml](new-object net.webclient).DownloadString("http://ip-address.domaintools.com/myip.xml")).dnstools.ip_address
Scott Weinstein
2009-07-18 15:57:22
A:
whatismyip.com or ipchicken.com are very easy to parse.
If you have a webhost or vps you can also determine it, without fear of it randomly going down leaving you stuck.
whatsisname
2009-07-17 22:10:03
+13
A:
Be nice and use
http://www.whatismyip.com/automation/n09230945.asp
for automated requests (they provide that page specifically for automated requests). Plus, you don't have to bother with any parsing.
Kevin L.
2009-07-17 22:11:43
For more info about why this is the preferred way:http://www.whatismyip.com/automation
Justin
2009-07-17 22:23:37
+3
A:
If you have access to a webserver with modphp, you can roll your own:
<?php print $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; ?>
If you don't want that to get abused, you'll have to keep it secret or add request limits.
I've been using one on my server for years.
Explicitly:
Create a file called whatismyip.php in your public_html folder in your website. It can be called anything and be anywhere in your webroot.
Add the line above, and then query your server:
curl http://example.com/whatismyip.php
for example.
guns
2009-07-17 22:16:56
I added a script like this to my server years ago and it is very useful. Everything else is bizarre overkill.
Alex JL
2009-07-18 15:10:20
A:
Another way is if you have access to a cloud email (yahoo, google, hotmail), send yourself an email. Then view the headers and you should see your IP address in there.
I would look up the exact area but the headers may vary from each implmentation, Look for the received-by and follow that until you get to something that looks like sent-by
EDIT: This answers the how to find IP address, not the via PROGRAMMATIC approach
Wayne
2009-07-18 02:51:05
+1
A:
If the router you are behind speak UPnP you could always use a UPnP library for whatever language you are developing in to query the router for its external ip.
Eld
2009-07-18 03:15:35
A:
If you're on a windows machine, another option may be this windows script from Daily Cup of Tech.
Michelle
2009-07-18 14:48:30