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+#+TITLE: Creating a "What Is My IP" website in four lines with nginx
+#+DATE: 2024-12-02T20:28:47-05:00
+#+DRAFT: false
+#+DESCRIPTION:
+#+TAGS[]: nginx
+#+KEYWORDS[]: nginx
+#+SLUG:
+#+SUMMARY:
+
+I recently wanted to create an endpoint on a development machine that
+could return my external IP address. Normally I would use one of a
+handful of services https://canhazip.com/ or https://ifconfig.ca/, but
+I wanted to see how easy it would be to make my own. As it turns out,
+it's incredibly easy, and doesn't even require leaving the reverse proxy.
+
+Using =nginx=, we can just create a block like this.
+
+#+begin_src
+location /ip {
+    default_type text/plain;
+    return 200 "$remote_addr\n";
+}
+#+end_src
+
+Where location =/ip= is the path that returns the IP.
+
+If we were to put that into a full server configuration, it might look
+something like this.
+
+#+begin_src
+server {
+        listen 80 default_server;
+
+        server_name _;
+
+        location / {
+            default_type text/plain;
+            return 200 "$remote_addr\n";
+        }
+}
+#+end_src
+
+It's really that simple. Now nginx will happily return the requesting
+IP address. No need to proxy to another application or service.