Here we go with another post! 🤘
In the other day I noticed all IPs recorded from visitor on one of my apps were the same, with a very little variation each-other! Aha~ found a bug!
Well, not much! 🙄 After a quick Google search I figured out that those IPs were all from CloudFlare (the CDN provider my apps are behind)! So, CloudFlare replaces the commonly used $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] variable with their own IP.
Fair enough!
So, if you're reading this, the chances are you are facing a similar problem and are looking for a solution ... or perhaps you're just curious, which is fine too. 🤪
Here's a very simple way to get the (real) client IP address. Note that the sintax used here is PHP7+, which means for earlier versions you're gonna need to apply some chained ifs and elses.
<?php
# PHP7+
$clientIP = $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP']
?? $_SERVER["HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP"] # when behind cloudflare
?? $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED']
?? $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']
?? $_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED']
?? $_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR']
?? $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']
?? '0.0.0.0';
# Earlier than PHP7
$clientIP = '0.0.0.0';
if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'])) {
$clientIP = $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'];
} elseif (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP'])) {
# when behind cloudflare
$clientIP = $_SERVER['HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP'];
} elseif (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'])) {
$clientIP = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
} elseif (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED'])) {
$clientIP = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED'];
} elseif (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR'])) {
$clientIP = $_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR'];
} elseif (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED'])) {
$clientIP = $_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED'];
} elseif (isset($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'])) {
$clientIP = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
}
echo "My client IP: ", $clientIP;
Happy coding! 👋
Top comments (4)
Good post Rogerio :)
I also had to unmask the real IP when I started using Cloudflare.
Since my projects were hosted on my own server and it was more than one project, I decided to use mod_remoteip instead of tweaking the code everywhere, and already get the real IP when I’m using $_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’].
More on this for those who are in the same situation: support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/ar...
That’s an awesome solution, Arvin! Thanks for sharing. 🙏👏🤩
Hi Rogerio,
Awesome solution!
I had the same problem. I used the "REMOTE_ADDR" method on my website and it was showing up my cloudflare ip address. I wanted to echo the users ip, so this answer helped me out a ton.