Public IP Address

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi All, I am wanting a script that will return my public IP address. The script will be running on a Windows machine that is behind a firewall. The best solution I have found uses the following code

#!/usr/bin/perl

use LWP::Simple;
$content = get("http://checkip.dyndns.org");
[download]

Does anyone have any better methods?
I can not use gethostbyname(Sys::Hostname::ghname())as it will only return my private network address.

The output from $content is as follows

<html><head><title>Current IP Check</title></head><body>Current IP Add
+ress: 123.132.12.23</body></html>
[download]

Any ideas on how to sort so that $content is left with only the ip address?
Thank you for your time

Comment on Public IP Address Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Public IP Address by Joost (Canon) on Nov 11, 2006 at 00:01 UTC
I don't think there is a standard way of determining your outside IP address, if only because there may be many different adresses for different interpretations of "outside". what you're doing now seems like a reasonable approach. `$content =~ s/.Current IP Address: ([\d.]+)./$1/;` [download] should filter the address. "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Public IP Address by NetWallah (Canon) on Nov 11, 2006 at 05:08 UTC
You may want to add additional external address providers, in case dyndns is unavailable. Here are a few alternatives: http://www.ipchicken.com/ http://www.whatismyip.com Here is some parsing code that will generically work on all 3 : (It could be made more paranoid, or cleverer, but this is easy to read): `my ($IP_addr)=$content=~m/(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)/;` [download] Better still, use Regexp::Common: (untested) `use Regexp::Common qw /net/; my ($IP_addr)= $content=~ /$RE{net}{IPv4}/ ;` [download] "A closed mouth gathers no feet." --Unknown	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Public IP Address by b10m (Vicar) on Nov 14, 2006 at 08:43 UTC
Our good brother Juerd has the easiest solution posted on his site: `use LWP::Simple; my $ip = get "http://tnx.nl/ip";` [download] ... also check out the awesome CPAN/perldoc redirect service on his site! -- b10m All code is usually tested, but rarely trusted.	[reply] [d/l]