Finding local IP addresses using Python's stdl

Question

How can I find local IP addresses (i.e. 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x) in Python platform independently and using only the standard library?

Answer 1

As an alias called myip, that should work everywhere:

alias myip="python -c 'import socket; print([l for l in ([ip for ip in socket.gethostbyname_ex(socket.gethostname())[2] if not ip.startswith(\"127.\")][:1], [[(s.connect((\"8.8.8.8\", 53)), s.getsockname()[0], s.close()) for s in [socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)]][0][1]]) if l][0][0])'"

• Works correctly with Python 2.x, Python 3.x, modern and old Linux distros, OSX/macOS and Windows for finding the current IPv4 address.
• Will not return the correct result for machines with multiple IP addresses, IPv6, no configured IP address or no internet access.

---

Same as above, but only the Python code:

import socket
print([l for l in ([ip for ip in socket.gethostbyname_ex(socket.gethostname())[2] if not ip.startswith("127.")][:1], [[(s.connect(('8.8.8.8', 53)), s.getsockname()[0], s.close()) for s in [socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)]][0][1]]) if l][0][0])

• This will throw an exception if no IP address is configured.

---

Version that will also work on LANs without an internet connection:

import socket
print((([ip for ip in socket.gethostbyname_ex(socket.gethostname())[2] if not ip.startswith("127.")] or [[(s.connect(("8.8.8.8", 53)), s.getsockname()[0], s.close()) for s in [socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)]][0][1]]) + ["no IP found"])[0])

(thanks @ccpizza)

---

Background:

Using socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname()) did not work here, because one of the computers I was on had an /etc/hosts with duplicate entries and references to itself. socket.gethostbyname() only returns the last entry in /etc/hosts.

This was my initial attempt, which weeds out all addresses starting with "127.":

import socket
print([ip for ip in socket.gethostbyname_ex(socket.gethostname())[2] if not ip.startswith("127.")][:1])

This works with Python 2 and 3, on Linux and Windows, but does not deal with several network devices or IPv6. However, it stopped working on recent Linux distros, so I tried this alternative technique instead. It tries to connect to the Google DNS server at 8.8.8.8 at port 53:

import socket
print([(s.connect(('8.8.8.8', 53)), s.getsockname()[0], s.close()) for s in [socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)]][0][1])

Then I combined the two above techniques into a one-liner that should work everywhere, and created the myip alias and Python snippet at the top of this answer.

With the increasing popularity of IPv6, and for servers with multiple network interfaces, using a third-party Python module for finding the IP address is probably both more robust and reliable than any of the methods listed here.

Answer 2

import socket
socket.gethostbyname(socket.getfqdn())

Answer 3

I had to solve the problem "Figure out if an IP address is local or not", and my first thought was to build a list of IPs that were local and then match against it. This is what led me to this question. However, I later realized there is a more straightfoward way to do it: Try to bind on that IP and see if it works.

_local_ip_cache = []
_nonlocal_ip_cache = []
def ip_islocal(ip):
    if ip in _local_ip_cache:
        return True
    if ip in _nonlocal_ip_cache:
        return False
    s = socket.socket()
    try:
        try:
            s.bind((ip, 0))
        except socket.error, e:
            if e.args[0] == errno.EADDRNOTAVAIL:
                _nonlocal_ip_cache.append(ip)
                return False
            else:
                raise
    finally:
        s.close()
    _local_ip_cache.append(ip)
    return True

I know this doesn't answer the question directly, but this should be helpful to anyone trying to solve the related question and who was following the same train of thought. This has the advantage of being a cross-platform solution (I think).

Answer 4

If the computer has a route to the Internet, this will always work to get the preferred local ip address, even if /etc/hosts is not set correctly.

import socket

s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
s.connect(('8.8.8.8', 1))  # connect() for UDP doesn't send packets
local_ip_address = s.getsockname()[0]

Answer 5

This is a variant of UnkwnTech's answer -- it provides a get_local_addr() function, which returns the primary LAN ip address of the host. I'm posting it because this adds a number of things: ipv6 support, error handling, ignoring localhost/linklocal addrs, and uses a TESTNET addr (rfc5737) to connect to.

# imports
import errno
import socket

# localhost prefixes
_local_networks = ("127.", "0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1")

# ignore these prefixes -- localhost, unspecified, and link-local
_ignored_networks = _local_networks + ("0.", "0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0", "169.254.", "fe80:")

def detect_family(addr):
    if "." in addr:
        assert ":" not in addr
        return socket.AF_INET
    elif ":" in addr:
        return socket.AF_INET6
    else:
        raise ValueError("invalid ipv4/6 address: %r" % addr)

def expand_addr(addr):
    """convert address into canonical expanded form --
    no leading zeroes in groups, and for ipv6: lowercase hex, no collapsed groups.
    """
    family = detect_family(addr)
    addr = socket.inet_ntop(family, socket.inet_pton(family, addr))
    if "::" in addr:
        count = 8-addr.count(":")
        addr = addr.replace("::", (":0" * count) + ":")
        if addr.startswith(":"):
            addr = "0" + addr
    return addr

def _get_local_addr(family, remote):
    try:
        s = socket.socket(family, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
        try:
            s.connect((remote, 9))
            return s.getsockname()[0]
        finally:
            s.close()
    except socket.error:
        return None

def get_local_addr(remote=None, ipv6=True):
    """get LAN address of host

    :param remote:
        return  LAN address that host would use to access that specific remote address.
        by default, returns address it would use to access the public internet.

    :param ipv6:
        by default, attempts to find an ipv6 address first.
        if set to False, only checks ipv4.

    :returns:
        primary LAN address for host, or ``None`` if couldn't be determined.
    """
    if remote:
        family = detect_family(remote)
        local = _get_local_addr(family, remote)
        if not local:
            return None
        if family == socket.AF_INET6:
            # expand zero groups so the startswith() test works.
            local = expand_addr(local)
        if local.startswith(_local_networks):
            # border case where remote addr belongs to host
            return local
    else:
        # NOTE: the two addresses used here are TESTNET addresses,
        #       which should never exist in the real world.
        if ipv6:
            local = _get_local_addr(socket.AF_INET6, "2001:db8::1234")
            # expand zero groups so the startswith() test works.
            if local:
                local = expand_addr(local)
        else:
            local = None
        if not local:
            local = _get_local_addr(socket.AF_INET, "192.0.2.123")
            if not local:
                return None
    if local.startswith(_ignored_networks):
        return None
    return local

Answer 6

Well you can use the command "ip route" on GNU/Linux to know your current IP address.

This shows the IP given to the interface by the DHCP server running on the router/modem. Usually "192.168.1.1/24" is the IP for local network where "24" means the range of posible IP addresses given by the DHCP server within the mask range.

Here's an example: Note that PyNotify is just an addition to get my point straight and is not required at all

#! /usr/bin/env python

import sys , pynotify

if sys.version_info[1] != 7:
   raise RuntimeError('Python 2.7 And Above Only')       

from subprocess import check_output # Available on Python 2.7+ | N/A 

IP = check_output(['ip', 'route'])
Split_Result = IP.split()

# print Split_Result[2] # Remove "#" to enable

pynotify.init("image")
notify = pynotify.Notification("Ip", "Server Running At:" + Split_Result[2] , "/home/User/wireless.png")    
notify.show()    

The advantage of this is that you don't need to specify the network interface. That's pretty useful when running a socket server

You can install PyNotify using easy_install or even Pip:

easy_install py-notify

or

pip install py-notify

or within python script/interpreter

from pip import main

main(['install', 'py-notify'])