ext-ip

ext-ip is a node.js library to get your external IP from multiple services. It's the successor of the meanwhile unmaintained external-ip module.

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Table of Contents

• Why a fork?
• Installation
• Basic Usage
  • Ready to Use
  • Configure Instance
• Response Handling
  • Promises and .get() Function
  • Events
  • Callback
  • Combine all Response Handlers
• Configuration
  • Default Services
• Command Line
• Code Validation
• Tests
• Bugs / Feature request
• License
• Donation

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Why a fork?

This project is a fork from the original external-ip module. But this was unmaintained for a long time, was very old-fashioned and had some code issues as well. So there is a update now, featuring some improvements ...

• Completely rewritten in ECMAScript 6 / ES6
• Nearly completely event driven
• Now supports events and promieses beside the old callback
• Added and extended features all over
• Uses more natively ways where possible
• Way more custom request options
• Uses real Errors instead of plain text for failure handling
• Fully tested with 100% code coverage
• Has only half the dependencies as before
• Fixed all Issues and added all pull requests of the original repository
• But is still fully compatible to the original ...

Installation

The module can be easily installed by npm:

$ npm install ext-ip

Basic Usage

Usage of this module is pretty straight forward. Just import ext-ip module and call constructor function. Afterwards it's possible to gather the external IP as often as wanted.

Ready to Use

The module is completely configured by default and ready to gather the external IP address.

let extIP = require("ext-ip")();
 
extIP.get().then(ip => {
    console.log(ip);
}, err => {
    console.error(err);
});

Configure Instance

Each instance of ext-ip can be configured with custom options. More details about the parameters can be found in configuration description.

let extIP = require("ext-ip")({
    mode           : "parallel",
    replace        : true,
    timeout        : 500,
    agent          : http.Agent,
    userAgent      : "curl/ext-ip-getter",
    followRedirect : true,
    maxRedirects   : 10,
    services       : [
        "http://ifconfig.co/x-real-ip",
        "http://ifconfig.io/ip"
    ]
});
 
extIP.get().then(ip => {
    console.log(ip);
});

Response Handling

There are three different ways to handle any response: promises, events or an old-school callback function. An example for each type is listed below.

Promises and .get() Function

Using a promise for response handling is directly possible. But best practice is to use the .get() function then, what is just a wrapper of extIP. Its used to prevent unhandled promise rejection warning on normal use of this module. Whenever wanted to use promises the .get() wrapper should be picked!

A promise is even returned by extIP function and is fully supported. Only difference is, that on rejection the err variable only contains a string instead of an Error object.

The usage of .get() will even fix some problems recognizing the response type of module exports in IntelliJ IDEs. So using this function will prevent you from automatically code completion highlights, but it will work even without.

let extIP = require("ext-ip")();
 
extIP.get().then(ip => {
    console.log(ip);
})
.catch(err => {
    console.error(err);
});

Events

There are two event types used by this module: ip and err. Both will have one parameter given to the listener function when event is triggered.

let extIP = require("ext-ip")();
 
extIP.on("ip", ip => {
    console.log(ip);
});
 
extIP.on("err", err => {
    console.error(err);
});
 
extIP();

Callback

The callback has up to two prarameters on execution: err (instance of Error) and ip (string). Whenever the first one is not null, there has been at least one error while execution.

let extIP = require("ext-ip")();
 
extIP((err, ip) => {
    if( err ){
        throw err;
    }
 
    console.log(ip);
});

Combine all Response Handlers

It's no problem to combine every response handlers in one instance too:

let extIP = require("ext-ip")();
 
// events
extIP.on("ip", ip => {
    console.log("event ip: " + ip);
});
 
extIP.on("err", err => {
    console.error("event error: " + err);
});
 
// callback
extIP.get((err, ip) => {
    if( err ) {
        console.error("callback error: " + err);
    }
    else {
        console.log("callback ip: " + ip);
    }
})
 
// promise
.then(ip => {
    console.log("promise ip: " + ip);
})
.catch(err => {
    console.error("promise error: " + err);
});

Configuration

The constructor function accepts a configuration object with different options to customize each instance.

Name	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	"sequential"	'sequential' or 'parallel' IP fetching
replace	boolean	false	true: replaces the default services, false: extends them
services	array	[...]	array of urls that return the IP in the document body
timeout	number	1000	timeout per request
agent	constructor	null	http(s).Agent instance to use
userAgent	string	"curl/"	user agent used for IP requests
followRedirect	boolean	true	follow htt 3xx responses as redirects
maxRedirects	number	10	maximum redirect count

Default Services

Below list is showing all default configured services in given order, used by this module. This is the default of the services configuration parameter.

http://icanhazip.com/
http://ifconfig.io/ip
http://ip.appspot.com/
http://ident.me/
http://whatismyip.akamai.com/
http://tnx.nl/ip
http://myip.dnsomatic.com/
http://ipecho.net/plain
http://diagnostic.opendns.com/myip
http://api.ipify.org/
http://trackip.net/ip

Command Line

The ext-ip command is available via command line or CLI. Copy of the help info text:

$ ext-ip -h
 
  Usage: ext-ip [options]
 
  Options:
 
    -h, --help            output usage information
    -V, --version         output the version number
    -R, --replace         replace internal services instead of extending them
    -a, --userAgent <ua>  set user agent for requests
    -F, --follow          follow 3xx http redirects
    -s, --services <url>  service url, see examples, required if using -R
    -t, --timeout <msec>  set timeout per request
    -P, --parallel        set to parallel mode
 
  Description:
 
    This program prints the external IP of the machine.
    All arguments are optional.
 
  Examples:
 
    $ ext-ip
    $ ext-ip -P -t 1500 -R -s http://icanhazip.com -s http://ifconfig.io/ip

Code Validation

This project uses jshint to validate the basic coding style and to prevent some basic design problems. A validation can be executed at any time with gulp.

$ gulp validate

Tests

Tests can be executed in the root directory. It uses mocha, chai and sinon to run those.

$ npm test

For code coverage istanbul is used. In-deep details about testing can be found in coverage/ folder after execution.

$ npm run cover

Bugs / Feature request

Please report bugs and feel free to ask for new features directly on GitHub.

License

This project is licensed under ISC license.

Donation

You like to support me?
You appreciate my work?
You use it in commercial projects?

Feel free to make a little donation! 😉