What is a reason for querying extreme-ip-lookup.com on client side? + (is api.ipify.org required too?)

[phpony]

What is a reason for querying extreme-ip-lookup.com on client side? + (is api.ipify.org required too?)

[phpony]

It's probably possible to just rely on something like this

peer_ip = socket.handshake.headers['x-forwarded-for'] || socket.conn.remoteAddress.split(":")[3];

at server side instead of any 3rd-party services on client side. That'll work faster and the app will not depend on other services uptime. I don't see any cases when 3rd-party services will return any other IP than code above will. Except some heavily misconfigured servers.

[miroslavpejic85]

Hey @phpony!
extreme-ip-lookup.com was initially totally free, then it became paid (geoip-lite you mentioned, seems like a great alternative to me and agree with you, that should be handled by server). However I was using it for debugging purposes, and you're right, this data on the server side it's not necessary/used at all. As for api.ipify.org, replacing it with your server-side proposal, seems excellent to me! I removed all unnecessary/unused code.
Thank you so much!

[miroslavpejic85]

@phpony Now I remember why I used extreme-ip-lookup on the client side :) It was a simple hack to not pay for the API key, as with the key=demo2 using it on the client side, in more cases you get the info, while if you use that key on the server side, no. Try this one: https://extreme-ip-lookup.com/json/?key=demo2
Since I've been asking about that feature in the MiroTalk forum, I was thinking of bringing it back... or using geoip-lite on server side, but got less info compared to extreme. Probably in some use cases for private project, this functionality can be useful to someone for collect statistics, not depend of google analytics and so on. In my case it was just for debugging purposes.

[miroslavpejic85]

Found the alternative: https://www.geojs.io/docs/v1/endpoints/geo/ this works on server side as well.

[miroslavpejic85]

Make it as optional if someone need (default false), implementation on server side.

# IP lookup
# Using GeoJS to get more info about peer by IP
# Doc: https://www.geojs.io/docs/v1/endpoints/geo/

IP_LOOKUP_ENABLED=false # true or false