{"id":450,"date":"2011-10-23T14:06:26","date_gmt":"2011-10-23T21:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/virendrachandak.wordpress.com\/?p=450"},"modified":"2016-03-20T12:22:49","modified_gmt":"2016-03-20T19:22:49","slug":"getting-real-client-ip-address-in-php-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virendrachandak.com\/techtalk\/getting-real-client-ip-address-in-php-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting real client IP address in PHP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many times we need the visitor’s ipaddress for validation, security, spam prevention, etc. Getting the Visitor’s ipaddress is very easy in PHP.<\/p>\n

The simplest way to get the visitor’s\/client’s ipaddress is using the $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']<\/code> or $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST']<\/code> variables. The variable in the $_SERVER<\/code> array are created by the web server (like apache) and we can use them in PHP.<\/p>\n

\r\n\/\/ Get the client ip address\r\n$ipaddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']\r\n<\/pre>\n

\nHowever, sometimes this does not returns the correct ipaddress of the visitor. This can be occur due to reasons like the user is behind a proxy, your apache server is behind a reverse proxy (e.g. varnish), etc. So we can use some other server variables to get the ipaddress. <\/p>\n
You can use any of the following 2 functions. Both the functions are equivalent with the difference only in how and from where the values are retrieved. The first one getenv()<\/code> is used to get the values from PHP’s environment variables and the second one $_SERVER<\/code> is used to get the values from the web server (e.g. apache).<\/p>\n
\r\n\/\/ Function to get the client ip address\r\nfunction get_client_ip_env() {\r\n\t$ipaddress = '';\r\n\tif (getenv('HTTP_CLIENT_IP'))\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = getenv('HTTP_CLIENT_IP');\r\n\telse if(getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'))\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR');\r\n\telse if(getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED'))\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED');\r\n\telse if(getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR'))\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR');\r\n\telse if(getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED'))\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED');\r\n\telse if(getenv('REMOTE_ADDR'))\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = getenv('REMOTE_ADDR');\r\n\telse\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = 'UNKNOWN';\r\n\r\n\treturn $ipaddress;\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\n
\r\n\/\/ Function to get the client ip address\r\nfunction get_client_ip_server() {\r\n\t$ipaddress = '';\r\n\tif ($_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'])\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'];\r\n\telse if($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'])\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];\r\n\telse if($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED'])\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED'];\r\n\telse if($_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR'])\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR'];\r\n\telse if($_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED'])\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED'];\r\n\telse if($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'])\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];\r\n\telse\r\n\t\t$ipaddress = 'UNKNOWN';\r\n\r\n\treturn $ipaddress;\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\n
getenv()<\/a><\/strong> is used to get the value of an environment variable in PHP
\n$_SERVER<\/a><\/strong> is an array contains server variables created by the web server.<\/p>\n
Note<\/span><\/strong>: HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR<\/strong> sometimes returns internal or local IP address, which is not usually useful. Also, it would return a comma separated list if it was forwarded from multiple ipaddresses.<\/p>\n
Note<\/span><\/strong>: This would work only on live site, because on your local host your ip would be one of the internal ip addresses, like 127.0.0.1<\/p>\n
<\/i> View Demo<\/a>
\n<\/i>  Download Source Code<\/a><\/div>\n
References<\/span><\/strong>:<\/p>\n