asp.net c# ip address lost after postback? - c#

One of my functions in a class is called GetIpAddress() which returns the following string:
System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables["REMOTE_ADDR"]
This all works well in regular page loads and gets my ip address, but when i for example let a user place a comment, then the ip address is lost after postback and i get an empty string returned.
Am I missing something here maybe?
Kind regards,
Mark

Use these ones:
HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]; // a user is going through a proxy server
HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables["REMOTE_ADDR"];
HttpContext.Current.Request.UserHostAddress;
Some explanation:
REMOTE_ADDR The IP address of the remote host making the request.
REMOTE_HOST The name of the host making the request. If the server does not have this information, it will set REMOTE_ADDR and leave this empty.

Do you have it wrapped in something like this?
if (!Page.IsPostBack) {
GetIpAddress()
}
You need to either call the function every time, or store it in a Shared variable.
Another option (As #Marc mentioned) would be to simply call Request.UserHostAddress instead of GetIpAddress... it's almost the same amount of typing, but you don't have to have a custom function for it.

Related

How to get the client requested url where the request is coming in the ASP.NET web api?

In My application the scenario like i want to read the client requested URL from ASP.NET WEB API.
Example:
https://xxx.test.com/test.html page is calling https://api.test.com/api/home/get/1 WEB method.
The requested url https://xxx.test.com/test.html need to read from the web method.
The below code is returning IP Address. It is not returning domain url.
// GET api/home/get/5
public string Get(int id)
{
return HttpContext.Current.Request.UserHostAddress;
}
Please suggest me.
Thanks in Advance.
Look to HttpContext.Current.Request.UrlReferrer.OriginalString. Note that this data was set by the client, so you can't trust it's 100% accurate.
Try this :
string url = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri;
// http://localhost:1302/TESTERS/Default6.aspx
string path = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.AbsolutePath;
// /TESTERS/Default6.aspx
string host = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.Host;
// localhost
If you're behind a load balancer or other reverse proxy, when asking for HttpContext.Current.Request.UserHostAddress, you won't get the IP of the client, instead you'll get the IP of the load balancer. In that case, look to HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["X-Forwarded-For"] for the browser's IP address. Note that if you aren't behind such hardware, this is a great attack vector.
You can try HttpRequest.UrlReferrer. The MSDN reference can be found here

What is Request.UserHostName actually returning and is it possible to convert it to something that I can get a host entry for?

I think I may be in a situation where the answer is this is not possible but in case not here goes...
I have written an ASP .NET MVC 3 application and I am using the Request.UserHostName property and then passing the value that that returns into Dns.GetHostEntry to find out all the possible IPs and the host name for the currently connected client, for example:
var clientAddress = Request.UserHostName;
var entry = Dns.GetHostEntry(clientAddress);
Generally that is fine except I have a case where I get a "host not found" SocketException from the Dns.GetHostEntry call.
The really odd thing is that the address that is returned from the Request.UserHostName property is not the public address or any of the private addresses. To prove this I ran this bit of code on the client machine in question...
var host = Dns.GetHostEntry(Dns.GetHostName());
foreach (var a in host.Aliases)
{
Console.WriteLine("alias '{0}'", a);
}
foreach (var a in host.AddressList)
{
Console.WriteLine("ip address '{0}'", a);
}
// ...from http://stackoverflow.com/a/2353177/1039947...
String direction = "";
WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create("http://checkip.dyndns.org/");
using (WebResponse response = request.GetResponse())
{
using (var stream = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
direction = stream.ReadToEnd();
}
}
int first = direction.IndexOf("Address: ") + 9;
int last = direction.LastIndexOf("</body>");
direction = direction.Substring(first, last - first);
Console.WriteLine("Public IP: '{0}'", direction);
It prints three IP addresses (::1, one private and one public) but none of them are the address that is returned from Request.UserHostName.
If I pass in any of the addresses printed from the above test application into the Dns.GetHostEntry method I get a sensible value back.
So, is there any way that I could get from this strange IP address that is not the public nor any of the privates, to one where I could get the host entry for it without an exception (and what is this address)?
By the way, there is no X_FORWARD_FOR header or anything else that I may be able to identify the client with, as far as I can tell, in the HTTP message?
Background to the Question
So it was pointed out (thanks Damien) that if I explained why I am asking this perhaps someone can provide an alternative approach so here is some background...
I have a requirement that the administrator of the application should be allowed to specify in the configuration a single machine that is allowed to view the page - IP address or machine name - I can probably get the machine name requirement removed but even if they specify the IP address in the configuration it will still not match the IP address that is returned from the UserHostName property since they will use the IP address that is returned when they ping the machine name.
My thinking, therefore, was that if I take whatever is sent in the HTTP header and pass that into GetHostEntry then take all the possible results from that (all the IPs and the host name) and see if any of them match the configured value I could say "allow" otherwise "disallow" (I was going to remove the part of the host name before the first dot too, to cover that eventuality). That scheme has been blown out of the water by this situation I have where the IP address is not at all what I would expect.
The host name of the client is not normally known because it is not transmitted at the HTTP level. The server cannot know it. Look at the HTTP requests with Fiddler to see for yourself that there is not a lot of information available to the server (and the client can forge all request contents of course).
Use the UserHostAddress property to get the IP address. That is the most you can reliably find out. Once you have that you can try to reverse the IP to a host name but that is not always possible.
I have a more specific answer to your question. By examining the source code for HttpRequest.UserHostName here, I found that it maps to a IIS server variable named REMOTE_HOST which is described here. The property will return the IP adddress of the client, unless you have configured IIS in the way described, in which case IIS will do a reverse DNS lookup to attempt to return the name associated with the IP.
Make sure you read the Remarks section at Dns.GetHostEntry on the many cases it can (partially) fail:
Remarks
The GetHostEntry method queries a DNS server for the IP
address that is associated with a host name or IP address.
If an empty string is passed as the hostNameOrAddress argument, then this method
returns the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses of the local host.
If the host name could not be found, the SocketException exception is returned
with a value of 11001 (Windows Sockets error WSAHOST_NOT_FOUND). This
exception can be returned if the DNS server does not respond. This
exception can also be returned if the name is not an official host
name or alias, or it cannot be found in the database(s) being queried.
The ArgumentException exception is also returned if the
hostNameOrAddress parameter contains Any or IPv6Any.
The GetHostEntry method assumes that if an IP literal string is passed in the
hostNameOrAddress parameter that the application wants an IPHostEntry
instance returned with all of the properties set. These properties
include the AddressList, Aliases, and HostName. As a result, the
implementation of the GetHostEntry method exhibits the following
behavior when an IP string literal is passed:
The method tries to parse the address. If the hostNameOrAddress parameter contains a legal IP string literal, then the first phase succeeds.
A reverse lookup using the IP address of the IP string literal is attempted to obtain the host name. This result is set as the HostName property.
The host name from this reverse lookup is used again to obtain all the possible
IP addresses associated with the name and set as the AddressList
property.
For an IPv4 string literal, all three steps above may
succeed. But it is possible for a stale DNS record for an IPv4 address
that actually belongs to a different host to be returned. This may
cause step #3 to fail and throw an exception (there is a DNS PTR
record for the IPv4 address, but no DNS A record for the IPv4
address).
For IPv6, step #2 above may fail, since most IPv6
deployments do not register the reverse (PTR) record for an IPv6
address. So this method may return the string IPv6 literal as the
fully-qualified domain (FQDN) host name in the HostName property.
The GetHostAddresses method has different behavior with respect to IP
literals. If step #1 above succeeds (it successfully parses as an IP
address), that address is immediately returned as the result. There is
no attempt at a reverse lookup.
IPv6 addresses are filtered from the results of the GetHostEntry method if the local computer does not have IPv6 installed. As a result, it is possible to get back an empty
IPHostEntry instance if only IPv6 results where available for the
hostNameOrAddress.parameter.
The Aliases property of the IPHostEntry instance returned is not populated by this method and will always be empty.

Is it possible to override the UserHostAddress property of the HttpRequest class?

I have a situation where I need to put my application behind a proxy server, this causes all the request's that are coming to my application to have the same set of IP addresses used by the proxy servers. However the Proxy server provides the real IP address of the requestor in a custom header, that I can use through my application so I can know the real IP address of the requestor. This is mainly used for logging and tracking. Is there a way I can have the UserHostAddress property return the value from this custom header? This would save a lot of work, because this property referenced about a few hundred time.
It's not possible to change the behavior of the UserHostAddress property, however what you can do is add an extension method to the Request class (something like GetRealUserHostAddress()) and just do a global replace on UserHostAddress -> GetRealUserHostAddress() to rapidly sort out all the instances of it in your solution.
public static string GetRealUserHostAddress(this HttpRequestBase request)
{
return request.Headers["HeaderName"] ?? request.UserHostAddress;
}
If you are saying that the proxy returns the real ip address of the client making the request, you don't need to use the UserHostAddress to read it; you can simply read the header directly:
string realIP = HttpContext.Request.Headers["actual_header_key"];
No, it's not possible. You can read the custom header and place in the request context and use that later.

Unable to Get Ip address of the http request : Asp.Net [C#]

I have a page, on which a request from other website drops in. I want to track IP address where the request is coming.
I am using Asp.Net C# & used three methods
1) httpRequest.UserHostAddress
Tried Http Server variables as
2) httpRequest.ServerVariables ["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"];
3) httpRequest.ServerVariables ["REMOTE_ADDR"];
But these methods are returning me my server address. As browser is taking this request as it is origonated at my end. But i want to get ip address of the page (Site) where the request is coming from. Can anyone help me in this.
Maybe you're looking for the Url Referrer properties.
Try
Request.UrlReferrer
Or
Request.ServerVariables["http_referer"]
With this you get the Url where the request come from.
private IPAddress[] PossibleReferringIPs
{
get
{
Uri refer = Request.UrlReferrer;
if(refer == null)
return null;
string host = refer.Host;
IPAddress hostAsIP;
if(IPAddress.TryParse(host, out hostAsIP))// had actual IP address as host part of URI
return new IPAddress[]{hostAsIP};
return Dns.GetHostAddresses(host);//This can throw SocketException which you may wish to catch at this point.
}
}
We can't guarantee that the referrer is set at all, even if there was a referrer, and if there is more than one IP address assigned to the domain we cannot know which served the page as since there is no connection between that server and yours, that information isn't available.
Have you tried
httpRequest.UrlReferrer.Host
?

Getting ipaddress and location of every user visiting your website

How do you get the ipaddress and location of every website vistor of your website through Asp.Net?
Thanks
To get the user's IP use:
Request.UserHostAddress
You can use this webservice to get their geographic location.
http://iplocationtools.com/ip_location_api.php
string VisitorIPAddress = Request.UserHostAddress.ToString();
and based on the ipaddress you can narrow down the location: find the geographical location of a host
Request.UserHostAddress won’t work if you're behind a proxy. Use this code:
public static String GetIPAddress()
{
String ip = HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"];
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(ip))
ip = HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables["REMOTE_ADDR"];
else
ip = ip.Split(',')[0];
return ip;
}
Note that HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR should be used BUT as it can return multiple IP addresses separated by a comma you need to use the Split function. See this page for more info.
Well the following property should give you the IP Address of teh client (or the clients proxy server)
Request.UserHostAddress
As for location, you'd need to use some GeoIP/GeoLocation plugin like MaxMind to figure that out.
http://www.maxmind.com/
To get the IP do:
Request.UserHostAddress
And you can map IP to location using a webservice (slower) or a database (faster) like this:
http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/node/view/5
It's server technology-agnostic, but I'd recommend piggy-backing on Google's AJAX loader: http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/documentation/#ClientLocation
It's in Javascript and will even give you the person's city/state/country (well, it takes a guess based on IP address). Post it back to the server and it's available to you in ASP.NET or whatever.

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