Return ip address of site visitors instead of Heroku server

Question

So am trying to get the IP address of the visitors to my app on Heroku, am using an API for this, the API works well locally but when I deploy the app on Heroku, I get the IP of the Heroku server, it is an express.js app and is using this setting

app.set('trust proxy', true);

I have seen a lot of solutions to this problem but none of the solutions works for me.

when i use

var ip = req.headers['x-forwarded-for'] || req.connection.remoteAddress;

i get this result

clientIp: '::1',

Yes, you're fetching it from the server, of course it returns the server IP... — SuperStormer, Mar 08 '21 at 17:42
Does this answer your question? [Express.js: how to get remote client address](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10849687/express-js-how-to-get-remote-client-address) — SuperStormer, Mar 08 '21 at 17:43

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 09 '21 at 08:23

First you will have to install this module npm i ipware

var get_ip = require('ipware')().get_ip;


app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    var ip_info = get_ip(req);
    console.log(ip_info);
    // { clientIp: '127.0.0.1', clientIpRoutable: false }
    next();
});

Mind you the result is in an object form, getting the ipaddress should be simple as doing

ip_info.clientIp

So i guess this should help.

yahya007 · Answer 2 · 2021-03-08T21:22:36.780

var ip = req.headers['x-forwarded-for'] || 
     req.connection.remoteAddress || 
     req.socket.remoteAddress ||
     (req.connection.socket ? req.connection.socket.remoteAddress : null);

But sometimes you can get more than one IP address with this req.headers['x-forwarded-for']

      var ipAddr = req.headers["x-forwarded-for"];
      if (ipAddr){
        var list = ipAddr.split(",");
        ipAddr = list[list.length-1];
      } else {
        ipAddr = req.connection.remoteAddress;
      }

You control with basic if else.

Or you can use this one and replace with req.headers['x-forwarded-for'] on top of the answer

let ip = request.headers['x-forwarded-for'].split(',')[0]

Thanks for your solution but i only get back a ::1 not the ip address — user15317824, Mar 09 '21 at 08:34

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 06 '22 at 01:29

I will assume the Op is using this API - http://geo.ipify.org/api/v2/country

The API is actually working well both locally and in production (on Heroku). The real issue or the reason why the Heroku server's IP address is showing instead of the visitor's IP address is that you are now calling the API from the Heroku server as mentioned by @SuperStormer.

As the Op pointed out, there are different ways to obtain a user's Ip address in express.js.

I ran a check on using these three both locally and on Heroku

req.ip
req.headers.["x-forwarded-for"]
req.connection.remoteAddress

Here is what it looks like on Heroku logs

PS: Trust proxy has been set to true which is why req.ip has the same value as req.headers.["x-forwarded-for"].

The IP address returned by req.connection.remoteAddress is an IPv4 address expressed in IPv6 notation and since it does not conform with the previous values it attests to the fact that there exists a proxy between the client and the server.

When you are on localhost: the IP address usually returned from accessing the req object is ::1.

::1 is actually an IP Address and is IPV6 notation for localhost. The loopback address in IPv4 is 127.0.01. In IPv6, the loopback address is 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 or ::1.

You can read this how-to-guide for more information on the different ways to obtain IP address.

Return ip address of site visitors instead of Heroku server

3 Answers3