How do I get the remote address of a client in servlet?

Question

Is there any way that I could get the original IP address of the client coming to the server? I can use request.getRemoteAddr(), but I always seem to get the IP

Answer 1

Why I think we should try to get IP from header 'X-Forwarded-For' first? If you get from request.getRemoteAddr(), it could be client's real ip or last proxy's ip which forwards the request. Thus we can't tell which condition it belongs to. However, if 'X-Forwarded-For' is set into the header, client ip is bound to be the left-most part of what you get from it.

    /**
     * Try to get real ip from request:
     * 

     *     
try X-Forwarded-For
     *     
try remote address
     * 
     *
     * @param request    request
     * @return real ip or ""
     */
    private String tryGetRealIp(HttpServletRequest request) {
        // X-Forwarded-For: , , 
        // If a request goes through multiple proxies, the IP addresses of each successive proxy is listed.
        // This means, the right-most IP address is the IP address of the most recent proxy and
        // the left-most IP address is the IP address of the originating client.
        String forwards = request.getHeader("X-Forwarded-For");
        if (StringUtils.isNotBlank(forwards)) {
            // The left-most IP must be client ip
            String ip = StringUtils.substringBefore(forwards, ",");
            return ip;
        } else if (StringUtils.isNotBlank(request.getRemoteAddr())) {
            // this could be real client ip or last proxy ip which forwards the request
            return request.getRemoteAddr();
        }
        return "";
    }