Retrieving current PC IP Address? Please help...

Hello. I am creating a basic two-person instant messenger-like application, and I need some help. If I use the "gethostbyname()" function, how would I get the user's IP address? I know there is a member of the "hostent" structure called "h_addr_list". How would I use that member to copy the IP address into a string?

Code I have myself:

Code:

---

char host[201];        // Hostname string
gethostname(host, 200);        // Get current hostname

hostent *h = gethostbyname(host);        // Function to get host information

// What to do with the "hostent *h" object?
// ...............

---

Thanks in advance. :)

If you want the external IP address, I don't think you can get it without asking another PC over the internet what it is.

Read beej's guide (link in the links thread)

Any given computer will have one or more associated ip addresses. When you call gethostbyname(), you validate the pointer, then access it's char * h_addr_list[], cycling though till a null pointer is reached. During each of those iterations, you will cast that index's char * to an unsigned long *, dereference that pointer to get each available address (which is in network byte order).

OK, so I don't explain very clearly so I will resort to an example.

Code:

---

/* get_ips() returns the number of addresses copied to addr_buff.
Optionally, you can pass a pointer the count as the last parameter. */

int get_ips(const char * hostname, unsigned long addr_buff[], int max, int * count = 0)
{
 int index = 0;

 if(count == 0) count = &index;

 hostent * host = gethostbyname(hostname);

  if(!host && max != 0)
 {
    if((addr_buff[index] = inet_addr(hostname)) != INADDR_NONE)
    ++index;
 }
  else
 {
    for( ; host->h_addr_list[ index ] && index < max; ++index )
  {
    addr_buff[index] = ( *(unsigned long*)host->h_addr_list[ index ] );
  }
 }

 return *count = index;
}




int local_host(unsigned long addr_buff[], int max, int * count = 0)
{
 const int buff_size = 10240;
 char local[buff_size];
 gethostname(local, buff_size);
 return get_ips(local, addr_buff, max, count);
}

---

Of course, any variation off that basic theme will do.

Here's a basic program:

Code:

---


int main()
{
 const int max = 246; // *just in case* :p
 unsigned long addresses[max];
 
 int total = local_host(addresses, max);

 cout << "There are " << total << " addresses available." << endl
 << "The are:" << endl;

 for(int index = 0; index < total; ++index)
  cout << inet_ntoa(addresses[index]) << endl;

 return cin.get();
}

---

Happy coding.

Well, there's:

1.gethostname() followed by gethostbyname()
2.connect() followed by getsockname()

3.connect() to www.whatsmyipaddress.com or something similar, get the html file and use some algorithm to filter out the useless HTML tags etc. and "your ip is" and figure out what it says your ip address is

1) is hard to use; it means you need to take a lot of steps to figure out which ip you want; if you're behind a router it might not work anyways.
2) means you need to make a connection first; www.google.ca should suffice, but if you're behind a router it won't work anyways.
3) is really slow and unreliable, as the site/layout may change at any time and might go down, etc. and also is limited by the speed of the server.

I ended up doing 2+3; I read a text file list of all the reliable sites I know and try each one until one accepts a connection; then I added a little text message at the bottom that says "if you're behind a router, visit www.whatsmyipaddress.com for your real address."