How to get a user's client IP address in ASP.NET?

Question

We have Request.UserHostAddress to get the IP address in ASP.NET, but this is usually the user\'s ISP\'s IP address, not exactly the user\'s machine IP address

Answer 1

All of the responses so far take into account the non-standardized, but very common, X-Forwarded-For header. There is a standardized Forwarded header which is a little more difficult to parse out. Some examples are as follows:

Forwarded: for="_gazonk"
Forwarded: For="[2001:db8:cafe::17]:4711"
Forwarded: for=192.0.2.60;proto=http;by=203.0.113.43
Forwarded: for=192.0.2.43, for=198.51.100.17

I have written a class that takes both of these headers into account when determining a client's IP address.

using System;
using System.Web;

namespace Util
{
    public static class IP
    {
        public static string GetIPAddress()
        {
            return GetIPAddress(new HttpRequestWrapper(HttpContext.Current.Request));
        }

        internal static string GetIPAddress(HttpRequestBase request)
        {
            // handle standardized 'Forwarded' header
            string forwarded = request.Headers["Forwarded"];
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(forwarded))
            {
                foreach (string segment in forwarded.Split(',')[0].Split(';'))
                {
                    string[] pair = segment.Trim().Split('=');
                    if (pair.Length == 2 && pair[0].Equals("for", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
                    {
                        string ip = pair[1].Trim('"');

                        // IPv6 addresses are always enclosed in square brackets
                        int left = ip.IndexOf('['), right = ip.IndexOf(']');
                        if (left == 0 && right > 0)
                        {
                            return ip.Substring(1, right - 1);
                        }

                        // strip port of IPv4 addresses
                        int colon = ip.IndexOf(':');
                        if (colon != -1)
                        {
                            return ip.Substring(0, colon);
                        }

                        // this will return IPv4, "unknown", and obfuscated addresses
                        return ip;
                    }
                }
            }

            // handle non-standardized 'X-Forwarded-For' header
            string xForwardedFor = request.Headers["X-Forwarded-For"];
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(xForwardedFor))
            {
                return xForwardedFor.Split(',')[0];
            }

            return request.UserHostAddress;
        }
    }
}

Below are some unit tests that I used to validate my solution:

using System.Collections.Specialized;
using System.Web;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;

namespace UtilTests
{
    [TestClass]
    public class IPTests
    {
        [TestMethod]
        public void TestForwardedObfuscated()
        {
            var request = new HttpRequestMock("for=\"_gazonk\"");
            Assert.AreEqual("_gazonk", Util.IP.GetIPAddress(request));
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestForwardedIPv6()
        {
            var request = new HttpRequestMock("For=\"[2001:db8:cafe::17]:4711\"");
            Assert.AreEqual("2001:db8:cafe::17", Util.IP.GetIPAddress(request));
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestForwardedIPv4()
        {
            var request = new HttpRequestMock("for=192.0.2.60;proto=http;by=203.0.113.43");
            Assert.AreEqual("192.0.2.60", Util.IP.GetIPAddress(request));
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestForwardedIPv4WithPort()
        {
            var request = new HttpRequestMock("for=192.0.2.60:443;proto=http;by=203.0.113.43");
            Assert.AreEqual("192.0.2.60", Util.IP.GetIPAddress(request));
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestForwardedMultiple()
        {
            var request = new HttpRequestMock("for=192.0.2.43, for=198.51.100.17");
            Assert.AreEqual("192.0.2.43", Util.IP.GetIPAddress(request));
        }
    }

    public class HttpRequestMock : HttpRequestBase
    {
        private NameValueCollection headers = new NameValueCollection();

        public HttpRequestMock(string forwarded)
        {
            headers["Forwarded"] = forwarded;
        }

        public override NameValueCollection Headers
        {
            get { return this.headers; }
        }
    }
}