Get the IP address of a user in Node.js

Last updated: December 21, 2022.

To get the IP address of a user of a Node.js website or app, you can simply call req.socket.remoteAddress, where req is the incoming request object.

Here is an example using a server created using Node’s native http module:

const http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {

  req.socket.remoteAddress; // returns user IP

  res.end();
}).listen(3000);

Using Express.js

Express.js is an insanely popular library used to simplify the process of creating a server in Node.js.

If you have installed Express.js and imported it at the top of your script, you can use an even simpler syntax for detecting a user’s IP address: req.ip!

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const port = 3000;

app.get('/', (req, res) => {

  req.iq; // Returns user IP
  
  res.send('Response complete');
})

app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Listening on port ${port}`)
})

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