A Django application to retrieve client's IP address

If you prefer a python only version that does not integrate with Django directly, but allows for more flexibility and advanced features, you can use the python-ipware package instead. django-ipware is a wrapper using python-ipware under the hood staring from version 6.0.0.

Best attempt to get client's IP address while keeping it DRY.

There is no perfect out-of-the-box solution against fake IP addresses, aka IP Address Spoofing. You are encouraged to read the (Advanced users) section of this page and use trusted_proxies_ips and/or proxy_count features to match your needs, especially if you are planning to include ipware in any authentication, security or anti-fraud related architecture.

This is an open source project, with the source code visible to all. Therefore, it may be exploited through unimplemented, or improperly implemented features.

Please use ipware ONLY as a complement to your firewall security measures!

1. easy_install django-ipware
2. pip install django-ipware
3. git clone http://github.com/un33k/django-ipware
    a. cd django-ipware
    b. run python setup.py install
4. wget https://github.com/un33k/django-ipware/zipball/master
    a. unzip the downloaded file
    b. cd into django-ipware-* directory
    c. run python setup.py install

 # In a view or a middleware where the `request` object is available

 from ipware import get_client_ip
 client_ip, is_routable = get_client_ip(request)
 if client_ip is None:
    # Unable to get the client's IP address
 else:
     # We got the client's IP address
     if is_routable:
         # The client's IP address is publicly routable on the Internet
     else:
         # The client's IP address is private

• Precedence Order

  The default meta precedence order is top to bottom. You may customize the order by providing your own IPWARE_META_PRECEDENCE_ORDER by adding it to your project's settings.py

   # The default meta precedence order (update as needed)
   IPWARE_META_PRECEDENCE_ORDER = (
        "X_FORWARDED_FOR",  # AWS ELB (default client is `left-most` [`<client>, <proxy1>, <proxy2>`])
        "HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR",  # Similar to X_FORWARDED_TO
        "HTTP_CLIENT_IP",  # Standard headers used by providers such as Amazon EC2, Heroku etc.
        "HTTP_X_REAL_IP",  # Standard headers used by providers such as Amazon EC2, Heroku etc.
        "HTTP_X_FORWARDED",  # Squid and others
        "HTTP_X_CLUSTER_CLIENT_IP",  # Rackspace LB and Riverbed Stingray
        "HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR",  # RFC 7239
        "HTTP_FORWARDED",  # RFC 7239
        "HTTP_VIA",  # Squid and others
        "X-CLIENT-IP",  # Microsoft Azure
        "X-REAL-IP",  # NGINX
        "X-CLUSTER-CLIENT-IP",  # Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers
        "X_FORWARDED",  # Squid
        "FORWARDED_FOR",  # RFC 7239
        "CF-CONNECTING-IP",  # CloudFlare
        "TRUE-CLIENT-IP",  # CloudFlare Enterprise,
        "FASTLY-CLIENT-IP",  # Firebase, Fastly
        "FORWARDED",  # RFC 7239
        "CLIENT-IP",  # Akamai and Cloudflare: True-Client-IP and Fastly: Fastly-Client-IP
        "REMOTE_ADDR",  # Default
    )

  Alternatively, you can provide your custom request header meta precedence order when calling get_client_ip().

get_client_ip(request, request_header_order=['X_FORWARDED_FOR'])
get_client_ip(request, request_header_order=['X_FORWARDED_FOR', 'HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'])

• Proxy Count

  The default meta proxy count is 0 unless explictly provided as an argument to get_client_ip(). You may customize the order by providing your own IPWARE_META_PROXY_COUNT by adding it to your project's settings.py

If your Django server is behind one or more known proxy server(s), you can filter out unwanted requests by providing the trusted proxy list when calling get_client_ip(request, proxy_trusted_ips=['177.139.233.133']). In the following example, your load balancer (LB) can be seen as a trusted proxy.

 `Real` Client  <public> <---> <public> LB (Server) <private> <--------> <private> Django Server
                                                                   ^
                                                                   |
 `Fake` Client  <private> <---> <private> LB (Server) <private> ---^

# In the above scenario, use your load balancer IP address as a way to filter out unwanted requests.
client_ip, is_routable = get_client_ip(request, proxy_trusted_ips=['177.139.233.133'])

# If you have multiple proxies, simply add them to the list
client_ip, is_routable = get_client_ip(request, proxy_trusted_ips=['177.139.233.133', '177.139.233.134'])

# For proxy servers with fixed sub-domain and dynamic IP, use the following pattern.
client_ip, is_routable = get_client_ip(request, proxy_trusted_ips=['177.139.', '177.140'])
client_ip, is_routable = get_client_ip(request, proxy_trusted_ips=['177.139.233.', '177.139.240'])

Please note: By default, the right-most proxy in the chain is the trusted proxy and that is the one your django server talks to. Therefore, ipware checks to see if the right-most proxy address starts with any ip pattern that was passed in via the proxy_trusted_ips list.

If your Django server is behind a known number of proxy server(s), you can filter out unwanted requests by providing the number of proxies when calling get_client_ip(request, proxy_count=1). In the following example, your load balancer (LB) can be seen as the only proxy.

 `Real` Client  <public> <---> <public> LB (Server) <private> <--------> <private> Django Server
                                                                   ^
                                                                   |
                                       `Fake` Client  <private> ---^

# In the above scenario, the total number of proxies can be used as a way to filter out unwanted requests.
client_ip, is_routable = get_client_ip(request, proxy_count=1)

# The above may be very useful in cases where your proxy server's IP address is assigned dynamically.
# However, If you have the proxy IP address, you can use it in combination to the proxy count.
client_ip, is_routable = get_client_ip(request, proxy_count=1, proxy_trusted_ips=['177.139.233.133'])

If your proxy server is configured such that the right-most IP address is that of the originating client, you can indicate right-most as your proxy_order when calling get_client_ip(request, proxy_order="right-most"). Please note that the de-facto standard for the originating client IP address is the left-most as per <client>, <proxy1>, <proxy2>.

To run the tests against the current environment:

python manage.py test

Released under a (MIT) license.

X.Y.Z Version

`MAJOR` version -- when you make incompatible API changes,
`MINOR` version -- when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner, and
`PATCH` version -- when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes.

Neekware Inc.