Ruby: how to do change object to something readable

Question

I'm using the geocoder gem which has the ability to pick up IP address from an http request. from the documentation:

Geocoder adds a +location+ method to the standard <tt>Rack::Request</tt> object so you can easily look up the location of any HTTP request by IP address. For example, in a Rails controller or a Sinatra app:

 # returns Geocoder::Result object
  result = request.location

I put

@result = request.location

in my controller and then in my view

<%= @result %>

However, I got this.

#<Geocoder::Result::Freegeoip:0x00000102dc7758>

I then tried

<%= @result.to_s %>

but it didn't change anything.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

To get the IP of a client use request.ip . It's more correct way of getting the IP, especially when your user is behind a proxy . So, it's simple as:

 request.ip

Here's its source:

 # File lib/rack/request.rb, line 256
 def ip
   if addr = @env['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR']
     (addr.split(',').grep(/\d\./).first || @env['REMOTE_ADDR']).to_s.strip
   else
     @env['REMOTE_ADDR']
   end
 end

Answer 2

If all you need is an IP address, then you can get that from the request headers. It may not be perfectly accurate due to spoofing, but from a quick look at some of the header values, I found the REMOTE_ADDR to contain mine. Just put this in a controller. If someone else can recommend other or better values to use, please let us know.

request.headers['REMOTE_ADDR']

I actually tried checking for HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, but it didn't exist in the headers. Perhaps webrick doesn't use it.