How can I get the client's IP address in a PHP webservice?

Question

I have developed a PHP webservice. I would like to log all incoming connections of the WS clients, which are consuming this web service. How can I obtain the client's IP address? The value of

$_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP']

seems to be always empty.

Answer 1

This should be what you want:

$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']

The IP address from which the user is viewing the current page.

http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.server.php

Answer 2

Are you using some kind of framework for your webservice? I saw some frameworks (For instance Agavi) which intentionally delete all the $SERVER data because they want to enfore you to use the validated values from a framework service.

Answer 3

You might try

<?php
var_dump($_SERVER);

to see all vars. But that actually also depends on the backend your script is running at. Is that Apache?

Answer 4

This worked for me.

http://roshanbh.com.np/2007/12/getting-real-ip-address-in-php.html

Answer 5

Actually, I would suggest using this function to cover all of your bases, such as people using proxies, shared networks etc.:

function getUserIpAddr()
{
    if (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'])) //if from shared
    {
        return $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'];
    }
    else if (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']))   //if from a proxy
    {
        return $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
    }
    else
    {
        return $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
    }
}