How To Get Visitor’s IP in PHP

The simplest way to get the visitor’s/client’s IP address is using the $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] or $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'] variables.

Sometimes this does not return the correct IP address of the visitor. Therefore some other server variables are also being used in below exmple to get the correct IP address.

getenv() function is used to get the value of an environment variable in PHP.

// Function to get the client IP address
function get_client_ip() {
    $ipaddress = '';
    if (getenv('HTTP_CLIENT_IP'))
        $ipaddress = getenv('HTTP_CLIENT_IP');
    else if(getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'))
        $ipaddress = getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR');
    else if(getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED'))
        $ipaddress = getenv('HTTP_X_FORWARDED');
    else if(getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR'))
        $ipaddress = getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR');
    else if(getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED'))
       $ipaddress = getenv('HTTP_FORWARDED');
    else if(getenv('REMOTE_ADDR'))
        $ipaddress = getenv('REMOTE_ADDR');
    else
        $ipaddress = 'UNKNOWN';
    return $ipaddress;
}
$ip = 'get_client_ip';
echo get_client_ip();
?>