How to get the client IP address in PHP [duplicate]

Answer 1

There are different types of users behind the Internet, so we want to catch the IP address from different portions. Those are:

1. $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] - This contains the real IP address of the client. That is the most reliable value you can find from the user.

2. $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'] - This will fetch the host name from which the user is viewing the current page. But for this script to work, hostname lookups on inside httpd.conf must be configured.

3. $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'] - This will fetch the IP address when the user is from shared Internet services.

4. $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] - This will fetch the IP address from the user when he/she is behind the proxy.

So we can use this following combined function to get the real IP address from users who are viewing in diffrent positions,

// Function to get the user IP address
function getUserIP() {
    $ipaddress = '';
    if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP']))
        $ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'];
    else if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']))
        $ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'];
    else if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED']))
        $ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED'];
    else if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_CLUSTER_CLIENT_IP']))
        $ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_CLUSTER_CLIENT_IP'];
    else if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR']))
        $ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR'];
    else if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED']))
        $ipaddress = $_SERVER['HTTP_FORWARDED'];
    else if(isset($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']))
        $ipaddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
    else
        $ipaddress = 'UNKNOWN';
    return $ipaddress;
}