[FIXED] How can I modify my IP address on my localhost in MAMP?

Issue

Developing a plugin for WordPress locally I'm wanting to implement Akismet in form validation but I'm required an IP address with the submission and when I run:

function check_ip_address() {
    if (isset($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'])) :
        $ip_address = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
    else :
        $ip_address = "undefined";
    endif;
    return $ip_address;
}
echo check_ip_address();

I get back a ::1. When I researched to resolve this I didn't find a solid answer from:

• Ask Different tag MAMP
• How do I rename MAMP web server?

When researching how to resolve ::1 I found Should a MAMP return ::1 as IP on localhost? that suggests a sudo of:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

So I go to MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf and try to modify line 48 from Listen 8888 to Listen 127.0.0.1 and I get an error and Apache will not restart. How can I modify my MAMP IP so I can get a proper IP from $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']?

Solution

It's ::1 because that's the IPv6 loopback address, equivalent of 127.0.0.1, and the remote address is yourself as MAMP is running locally, the remote browser is on the same machine.

REMOTE_ADDR represents the IP the request came from. In most scenarios this is the same as the IP the browsers machine has on the open-internet, but here MAMP is running Apache natively so it's 127.0.0.1 or ::1. If you were using a docker container or a Virtual machine, it would be a private IP on a range specified when configuring your containers/VMs.

So to retrieve the IP you're expecting, you'll need to use an external service, or, for the sake of debugging, pass Akismet a hardcoded IP, but I suspect it's asking for the IP of whomever is commenting.

Answered By - Tom J Nowell