Friday, September 18, 2015

Simple API server for IP Address Information Lookup


I find that I often have the need, in a web application, to lookup information about an IP address that a request comes from.

To serve this purpose I created IPAPI (GitHub), a simple server providing a single API endpoint that returns information about an IP address.

(You should try the server just because the name is a palindrome. Imagine the awe and respect you'll get when you say "I ran a Palindrome API server today.")

The server runs on Node.js and uses the GeoLite2 database from MaxMind.

You can install and run the server with:

git clone [email protected]:guyellis/ipapi.git
npm install
node index.js

or

npm install ipapi
node node_modules/ipapi/index.js

The server will download and unzip the IP database if it's not found locally.

Using the server is as simple as having your client call http://<your-domain/ip/<x.x.x.x> and getting back JSON with information about the IP.

There are plenty of improvements that can made to this simple server. Pull Requests gladly accepted.

2 comments:

  1. does it auto update its database to the latest ?

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    Replies
    1. It pulls down the latest database if it can't find a DB locally. It then saves the DB locally and uses that on startup. If you want the latest each time you run the server or want it updated on (say) a daily basis then you'd just need to remove the local DB and start the server again. Or modify the code and do a pull request.

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