Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

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If they're running Node, that probably means it's not in the browser.

If it's a server on the internet that browsers connect to (like a standard web app), it already knows all the connecting IPs from the HTTP requests.

If it's some sort of wrapper running Node locally on client computers, well, presumably it would communicate with your server anyway (or else what good are the analytics)? In that case your server would still have their IP address.

You don't need to use a third party like whatismyip.com unless for some reason you didn't want your server involved at all, you just want to find their public IP and then store it locally (for some reason) on that same computer. Hard to imagine why you'd do that unless you're building some sort of malware or long-term user tracking.

I want Public IP not the local network IP.

const userIP = req.ip || req.connection.remoteAddress || req.headers['x-forwarded-for'];

Their public IP is how they reach your server, unless you're on the same computer or local network as them. Are you? It's not clear from your post where Node is running relative to your user.

The workflow goes like this: I’m working on a React application where users make API requests and send data. I need to capture the user’s public IP address before storing the data. Currently, my method returns the local IP address, but I need the public IP address instead.

I'm still not sure if this is what you're asking, but have you already tried checking `req.headers['x-forwarded-for']`? Normally node just knows the incoming request IP (that's how it was reached to begin with), but if you're behind another server or proxy, sometimes the original IP gets forwarded instead.

If that's not what you're asking... can you please clarify your client-server architecture (if there even is one?)

Where is Node running? Is it on an internet-facing server, acting as a backend? Or are you doing some sort of local desktop app? Is Node using its own http systems to act as a server, or is there some other web server or reverse proxy running in front of it?

Is React running on the client's browser, separate from Node altogether? Or are you using React on the backend too (like in Next or similar)?

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