What is my IP?

Faced (again!) with the need for a reliable and straightforward external IP lookup service, I was searching again for the next external IP service. I have run into SaaS service, DDNS providers, Chrome Extension scrapers – the works.

I decided to come up with a better way that will fix this forever – which I will never have to change again – ever!

• No credits to manage or run out.
• No separate accounts to keep track of.
• No changes in service that need management
• No SaaS models with recurring costs, subscription fees, credit card updates and Terms of Service
• No Management!

I already have an AWS Account – and our company will have this account – forever. So I decided to leverage AWS Lambda to create the simple service and ‘hides’ it behind an obfusticated URL that one will be able to guess.

Here’s How I Did It:

1. Start a New Lambda Function: Within your AWS account, navigate to the Lambda service and initiate a new function.
2. Insert the Code: Copy and paste the following code into the Lambda code editor:

lambda_handler(event, context): 
    client_ip = event['requestContext']['http']['sourceIp']  
    return {
        'statusCode': 200,
        'body': f'{client_ip}'
    }

3. Deploy Your Function: Click “Deploy” to save your changes.
4. Enable Public Access: Click “Configuration” and then “Function URL” and enable the public URL. (Enable ‘CORS’ to use this from Javascript or in a browser)
5. Open: Click the provided function URL – and use this in any script.

Configuration

• Use the minimum configuration – 128 MB memory and 512MB of ephemeral storage
• Enable the Function URL in order to be able to access this remotely / from your browser
• Permissions – none needed! if you need permissions you are doing something custom (and I would love to know about it)

Understanding the Costs:

If you use fewer than 1 Million requests a month – it is in their Free Tier

• I wanted to know the actual cost – so I went to their calculator and started adding zeros to the number requests until it registered a cost. It would take 100,000 requests a month (3,000 per day) and it would cost $0.04.
• Since I use may 500 / per month – I think the cost is too low to calculate.
• Here is my screen shot of their calculations from their calculator

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. Is it secure?
   • I don’t know, you tell me – it has a function URL which functions like an API key – only you know that URL until you expose it to someone…..
2. Can I integrate this with my applications?
   • Yes! some examples below
3. Do I track the usage?
   • No, i can look at the cloud watch logs but when I look at the Lambda costs on my AWS bill and it is less an $0.01 I dont care.

Language/Framework	One-Liner Usage
PHP	$ip = file_get_contents("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/");
jQuery	$.get("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/", function(ip) { console.log(ip); });
JavaScript (Fetch API)	fetch("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/").then(response => response.text()).then(ip => console.log(ip));
Python	import requests\nip = requests.get("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/").text
Go	resp, _ := http.Get("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/")\nbody, _ := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)\nfmt.Println(string(body))
ASP.NET (C#)	var ip = new WebClient().DownloadString("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/");
TypeScript (Fetch API)	fetch("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/").then(response => response.text()).then(ip => console.log(ip));
Ruby	ip = URI.open("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/").read
Java	String ip = new Scanner(new URL("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/").openStream(), "UTF-8").useDelimiter("\\A").next();
Node.js (Axios)	const axios = require('axios');\naxios.get("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/").then(response => console.log(response.data));
Swift (URLSession)	URLSession.shared.dataTask(with: URL(string: "https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/")!) { data, _, _ in\nif let data = data { print(String(data: data, encoding: .utf8)!) }}.resume()
Kotlin (HttpURLConnection)	val url = URL("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/")\nval ip = url.readText()
Perl	use LWP::Simple;\n$ip = get("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/");
Rust (reqwest)	let resp = reqwest::blocking::get("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/")?.text()?;
Dart (http package)	var url = Uri.parse('https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/');\nvar response = await http.get(url);\nprint(response.body);
Shell (curl)	ip=$(curl -s https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/)
Scala (scala.io.Source)	val ip = scala.io.Source.fromURL("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/").mkString
Clojure (clj-http)	(require '[clj-http.client :as client])\n(let [response (client/get "https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/")]\n (println (:body response)))
Elixir (HTTPoison)	case HTTPoison.get("https://xyxxyxyxyxyxyxyxyx.lambda-url.us-west-2.on.aws/") do\n {:ok, %HTTPoison.Response{body: body}} -> IO.puts(body)\n {:error, _} -> IO.puts("Error")\nend