Getting external IP

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

I am new to Perl and I am trying to make a script that will pull my external IP address, then write the IP to a file with the date after it. I seem to be missing something here as it always gives me a result of could not find the IP. Did I not initialize or use my variables properly, or am I not parsing the site properly? Any help or pointers would be appreciated. Thanks in advance

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Slurp;
use LWP::Simple;
use Time::localtime;

# Location of file to write to
my $addresses = '/home/blimpton/Pro/logger/addresses.txt';

# Find out what the external IP is
my $ip = get('https://automation.whatismyip.com/n09230945.asp');
$ip = 'Could find ip address!' if !$ip;

# Current Date
my $month = localtime->mon + 1;
my $day = localtime->mday;
my $year = localtime->year + 1900;
my $current_date = "$month-$day-$year";

# Write to the file 
if ($ip = write_file($addresses, {append => 1}, $ip . ',' . $current_d
+ate . "\n"));
[download]

Comment on Getting external IP Download Code

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Re: Getting external IP by Kenosis (Priest) on Jun 28, 2012 at 22:37 UTC
Try the following (site) to obtain your external IP address: `chomp (my $ip = get('http://icanhazip.com'));` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Getting external IP by vwyoda (Initiate) on Jun 28, 2012 at 22:49 UTC
Thanks that gave me my desired results :) Though I am not sure, why that works and mine did not. Time to read about chomp and re-read about get again. Then just need to figure out the last thing to not record a duplicate IP in the file.	[reply]
Re^3: Getting external IP by Kenosis (Priest) on Jun 28, 2012 at 22:55 UTC
Glad it worked! I'm guessing that the issue was mainly the site you were using, as `http://icanhazip.com/` returns just a plain external IP address.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Getting external IP by vwyoda (Initiate) on Jun 28, 2012 at 23:15 UTC
Re^5: Getting external IP by Kenosis (Priest) on Jun 28, 2012 at 23:19 UTC
Re: Getting external IP by Corion (Patriarch) on Jun 28, 2012 at 22:04 UTC
Most likely, you are missing the module LWP::Protocol::https for accessing `https` modules and thus the request to your URL fails and returns an empty string.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Getting external IP by vwyoda (Initiate) on Jun 28, 2012 at 22:45 UTC
I tried adding that, installed on my system and still no dice. I also tried removing the "s" so it was http and removed the added LWP::Protocol::https and still gives the same result.	[reply]
Re: Getting external IP by Anonymous Monk on Jun 29, 2012 at 11:32 UTC
Also note that what works okay from home might not be useful in a big corporate network, with lots of buffers and bounces between where you are and the big world outside.	[reply]