If you are behind a router which obtains the external IP, I'm afraid you have no other option but to use external service like you do. If the router itself has some query interface, you can use it, but the solution will be very environment-specific and unreliable.

I prefer this Amazon AWS endpoint:

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

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)

Try:

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

Hope this is helpful

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'}

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

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

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))

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).

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 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()

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'

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

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

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

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