Rails: Get Client IP address

In Rails, what's the best way to get the ip address of the client connecting to the server?

Here are two ways I've found:

request.remote_ip
request.env['HTTP_X_REAL_IP']

I would just use the request.remote_ip that's simple and it works. Any reason you need another method?

See: Get real IP address in local Rails development environment for some other things you can do with client server ip's.

request.remote_ip is an interpretation of all the available IP address information and it will make a best-guess. If you access the variables directly you assume responsibility for testing them in the correct precedence order. Proxies introduce a number of headers that create environment variables with different names.

Get client ip using command:

request.remote_ip

I found request.env['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] very useful too in cases when request.remote_ip returns 127.0.0.1

For anyone interested and using a newer rails and the Devise gem: Devise's "trackable" option includes a column for current/last_sign_in_ip in the users table.