If the machine is being a firewall then your solution is a very sensible one: the alternative being able to query the firewall which ends-up being very dependent on the type of firewall (if at all possible).

If you think and external source is too unreliable, you could pool a few different services. For most ip lookup pages they require you to scrape html, but a few of them that have created lean pages for scripts like yours – also so they can reduce the hits on their sites:

• automation.whatismyip.com/n09230945.asp (Update: whatismyip has taken this service down)
• whatismyip.org

ipWebCode = urllib.request.urlopen("http://ip.nefsc.noaa.gov").read().decode("utf8")
ipWebCode=ipWebCode.split("color=red> ")
ipWebCode = ipWebCode[1]
ipWebCode = ipWebCode.split("</font>")
externalIp = ipWebCode[0]

this is a short snippet I had written for another program. The trick was finding a simple enough website so that dissecting the html wasn’t a pain.

I tried most of the other answers on this question here and came to find that most of the services used were defunct except one.

Here is a script that should do the trick and download only a minimal amount of information:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import urllib
import re

def get_external_ip():
    site = urllib.urlopen("http://checkip.dyndns.org/").read()
    grab = re.findall('([0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+)', site)
    address = grab[0]
    return address

if __name__ == '__main__':
  print( get_external_ip() )

Here’s another alternative script.

def track_ip():
   """
   Returns Dict with the following keys:
   - ip
   - latlong
   - country
   - city
   - user-agent
   """

   conn = httplib.HTTPConnection("www.trackip.net")
   conn.request("GET", "/ip?json")
   resp = conn.getresponse()
   print resp.status, resp.reason

   if resp.status == 200:
       ip = json.loads(resp.read())
   else:
       print 'Connection Error: %s' % resp.reason

   conn.close()
   return ip

EDIT: Don’t forget to import httplib and json

In [1]: import stun

stun.get_ip_info()
('Restric NAT', 'xx.xx.xx.xx', 55320)

If you’re just writing for yourself and not for a generalized application, you might be able to find the address on the setup page for your router and then scrape it from that page’s html. This worked fine for me with my SMC router. One read and one simple RE search and I’ve found it.

My particular interest in doing this was to let me know my home IP address when I was away from home, so I could get back in via VNC. A few more lines of Python stores the address in Dropbox for outside access, and even emails me if it sees a change. I’ve scheduled it to happen on boot and once an hour thereafter.

The most simple (non python) working solution I can think of is

wget -q -O- icanhazip.com

I’d like to add a very short Python3 solution which makes use of the JSON API of http://hostip.info.

from urllib.request import urlopen
import json
url = 'http://api.hostip.info/get_json.php'
info = json.loads(urlopen(url).read().decode('utf-8'))
print(info['ip'])

You can of course add some error checking, a timeout condition and some convenience:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
from urllib.request import urlopen
from urllib.error import URLError
import json

try:
    url = 'http://api.hostip.info/get_json.php'
    info = json.loads(urlopen(url, timeout = 15).read().decode('utf-8'))
    print(info['ip'])
except URLError as e:
    print(e.reason, end=' ') # e.g. 'timed out'
    print('(are you connected to the internet?)')
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    pass

In my opinion the simplest solution is

import requests
f = requests.request('GET', 'http://myip.dnsomatic.com')
ip = f.text

Thats all.

Use this script :

import urllib, json

data = json.loads(urllib.urlopen("http://ip.jsontest.com/").read())
print data["ip"]

Without json :

import urllib, re

data = re.search('"([0-9.]*)"', urllib.urlopen("http://ip.jsontest.com/").read()).group(1)
print data

I liked the http://ipify.org. They even provide Python code for using their API.

# This example requires the requests library be installed.  You can learn more
# about the Requests library here: http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/
from requests import get

ip = get('https://api.ipify.org').content.decode('utf8')
print('My public IP address is: {}'.format(ip))

You should use the UPnP protocol to query your router for this information. Most importantly, this does not rely on an external service, which all the other answers to this question seem to suggest.

There’s a Python library called miniupnp which can do this, see e.g. miniupnpc/testupnpigd.py.

pip install miniupnpc

Based on their example you should be able to do something like this:

import miniupnpc

u = miniupnpc.UPnP()
u.discoverdelay = 200
u.discover()
u.selectigd()
print('external ip address: {}'.format(u.externalipaddress()))

Python3, using nothing else but the standard library

As mentioned before, one can use an external service like ident.me in order to discover the external IP address of your router.

Here is how it is done with python3, using nothing else but the standard library:

import urllib.request

external_ip = urllib.request.urlopen('https://ident.me').read().decode('utf8')

print(external_ip)

Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses can be returned, based on availability and client preference; use https://v4.ident.me/ for IPv4 only, or https://v6.ident.me/ for IPv6 only.

import requests
import re


def getMyExtIp():
    try:
        res = requests.get("http://whatismyip.org")
        myIp = re.compile('(d{1,3}.){3}d{1,3}').search(res.text).group()
        if myIp != "":
            return myIp
    except:
        pass
    return "n/a"

Working with Python 2.7.6 and 2.7.13

import urllib2  
req = urllib2.Request('http://icanhazip.com', data=None)  
response = urllib2.urlopen(req, timeout=5)  
print(response.read())

There are a few other ways that do not rely on Python checking an external web site, however the OS can. Your primary issue here, is that even if you were not using Python, if you were using the command line, there are no "built-in" commands that can just simply tell you the external (WAN) IP. Commands such as "ip addr show" and "ifconfig -a" show you the server’s IP address’s within the network. Only the router actually holds the external IP. However, there are ways to find the external IP address (WAN IP) from the command line.

These examples are:

http://ipecho.net/plain ; echo
curl ipinfo.io/ip
dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com
dig TXT +short o-o.myaddr.l.google.com @ns1.google.com

Therefore, the python code would be:

import os
ip = os.popen('wget -qO- http://ipecho.net/plain ; echo').readlines(-1)[0].strip()
print ip

OR

import os
iN, out, err = os.popen3('curl ipinfo.io/ip')
iN.close() ; err.close()
ip = out.read().strip()
print ip

OR

import os
ip = os.popen('dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com').readlines(-1)[0].strip()
print ip

Or, plug any other of the examples above, into a command like os.popen, os.popen2, os.popen3, or os.system.

P.S. you can use "pip3 install pytis" and use/take a look at, the "getip" program, written in Python.
You can also find it’s code here: https://github.com/PyTis/PyTis/blob/development/src/pytis/getip.py

If you don’t want to use external services (IP websites, etc.) You can use the UPnP Protocol.

Do to that we use a simple UPnP client library (https://github.com/flyte/upnpclient)

Install:

pip install upnpclient

Simple Code:

import upnpclient

devices = upnpclient.discover()

if(len(devices) > 0):
    externalIP = devices[0].WANIPConn1.GetExternalIPAddress()
    print(externalIP)
else:
    print('No Connected network interface detected')

Full Code (to get more information as mentioned in the github readme)

In [1]: import upnpclient

In [2]: devices = upnpclient.discover()

In [3]: devices
Out[3]: 
[<Device 'OpenWRT router'>,
 <Device 'Harmony Hub'>,
 <Device 'walternate: root'>]

In [4]: d = devices[0]

In [5]: d.WANIPConn1.GetStatusInfo()
Out[5]: 
{'NewConnectionStatus': 'Connected',
 'NewLastConnectionError': 'ERROR_NONE',
 'NewUptime': 14851479}

In [6]: d.WANIPConn1.GetNATRSIPStatus()
Out[6]: {'NewNATEnabled': True, 'NewRSIPAvailable': False}

In [7]: d.WANIPConn1.GetExternalIPAddress()
Out[7]: {'NewExternalIPAddress': '123.123.123.123'}

Use requests module:

import requests

myip = requests.get('https://www.wikipedia.org').headers['X-Client-IP']

print("n[+] Public IP: "+myip)

As simple as running this in Python3:

import os

externalIP  = os.popen('curl -s ifconfig.me').readline()
print(externalIP)

Linux only solution.

On Linux Systems, you can use Python to execute a command on the shell. I think it might help someone.

Something like this, (assuming ‘dig/drill’ is working on the os)

import os 
command = "dig TXT +short o-o.myaddr.l.google.com @ns1.google.com | awk -F'"' '{print $2}' " 
ip = os.system(command)

For Arch users, please replace ‘dig’ with ‘drill’.

I prefer this Amazon AWS endpoint:

import requests
ip = requests.get('https://checkip.amazonaws.com').text.strip()

If you are not interested in hitting any url to get public ip, I think following code can help you to get public ip using python of your machine

import os
externalIP  = os.popen("ifconfig | grep 'inet' | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{print $2}' | sed -n 3p").readline()
print externalIP

sed -n 3p line varies as per the network you are using for connecting device.

I was facing same issue, I was needed public ip of iot device which is hitting my server. but public ip is totally different in ifconfig command and ip i am getting in server from request object. after this I am adding extra param into my request to send ip of device to my server.

hope this is helpful

Try:

import requests 
ip = requests.get('http://ipinfo.io/json').json()['ip']

Hope this is helpful

import os
externalIp = os.popen("ipconfig").read().split(":")[15][1:14]

some numbers may need to be changed but this works for me

I use IPGrab because it’s easy to remember:

# This example requires the requests library be installed.  You can learn more
# about the Requests library here: http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/
from requests import get

ip = get('http://ipgrab.io').text
print('My public IP address is: {}'.format(ip))

I liked Sergiy Ostrovsky’s answer, but I think there is an even tidier way to do this now.

1. Install ipify library.

pip install ipify

2. Import and use the library in your Python program.

import ipify
ip = ipify.get_ip()

import os
public_ip = os.system("inxi -i |grep ‘WAN IP’")
print(public_ip)

Unfortunately, there is no way to get your external IP address without consulting a computer on the internet. At best, you can get the local network IP address of your network card (which is likely a 192.16.. address).

You can use the whatismyip module to get the external IP addres. It has no dependencies outside the Python 3 standard library. It connects to public STUN servers and what-is-my-ip websites to find the IPv4 or IPv6 address. Run pip install whatismyip

Example:

>>> import whatismyip
>>> whatismyip.amionline()
True
>>> whatismyip.whatismyip()  # Prefers IPv4 addresses, but can return either IPv4 or IPv6.
'69.89.31.226'
>>> whatismyip.whatismyipv4()
'69.89.31.226'
>>> whatismyip.whatismyipv6()
'2345:0425:2CA1:0000:0000:0567:5673:23b5'

To get external IP address, use this code:

from requests import get

def get_external_ip()->str:
    return get('https://api.ipify.org/').text

If you are checking frequently, the amazon page blocks the request. Maybe others do so too. This code chooses each call a new link, and only returns if there is a valid result. Maybe it is also a good idea if the response really contains an IP address. Because of that, I used the regex from here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/36760050

import re
import random
import requests

ipreg = re.compile(
    r"""^(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[0-9]).){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[0-9])$"""
)


def _getip(link, action):
    result = None
    try:
        with requests.get(link) as fa:
            result = action(fa)
            result = ipreg.findall(result)[0]
    except Exception:
        pass
    return result


def get_ip_of_this_pc():
    fu1 = lambda fa: fa.text.strip()
    fu2 = lambda fa: fa.json()["ip"].strip()
    sites_and_actions = [
        ("https://checkip.amazonaws.com", fu1),
        ("https://api.ipify.org", fu1),
        ("https://ident.me", fu1),
        ("http://myip.dnsomatic.com", fu1),
        ("http://ipinfo.io/json", fu2),
        ("http://ipgrab.io", fu1),
        ("http://icanhazip.com/", fu1),
        ("https://www.trackip.net/ip", fu1),
    ]
    random.shuffle(sites_and_actions)
    for link, action in sites_and_actions:
        result = _getip(link, action)
        if result:
            return result


myip = get_ip_of_this_pc()
print(myip)