Get IP Address by parsing website

Category:

C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET

Type:

Classes

Difficulty:

Intermediate

Author:

Anonymous

Version Compatibility: Visual Basic.NET

More information:

This class wil retreive the IP address by downloading the source of www.whatismyip.com and saving it to temp. A streamreader will read the contents and find the IP. It is returned as a string. Usage: Dim getIPObject As New getIP.obtainIP Dim yourIPAddress As String = getIPObject.getIPstring() MessageBox.Show(yourIPAddress)

Instructions: Copy the declarations and code below and paste directly into your VB project.

Declarations:
' (None)

Code:

<Microsoft.VisualBasic.ComClassAttribute()> Public Class obtainIP
    Public Function getIPstring() As String

'This downloads the source of whatismyip.com 
        Dim wclient As New System.Net.WebClient
        Try
            'Download the source to the temp path
            wclient.DownloadFile("http://www.whatismyip.com/", "C:\temp\ip.txt")
        Catch
            'If there is a problem it will be caught and will return and error message
            Dim errorString As String = "Unable to get IP."
            Return errorString
            Exit Function
        End Try

'This creates the filestream and streamreader that is used to read the source 
        Dim FS As New System.IO.FileStream("C:\temp\ip.txt", IO.FileMode.Open)
        Dim SR As New System.IO.StreamReader(FS)

'Here is where we start looking for the ip. This is the line we are trying to find.
        '<h1> Your IP is XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX <br></h1>

'This puts the entire file into a string
        Dim entirefile As String = SR.ReadToEnd

'This gets the starting position of the ip address
        Dim startIndex As Integer = entirefile.IndexOf("<h1>Your IP is ")

'This reads 15 characters from the begginning of the ip
        Dim restOfTheLine As String = entirefile.Substring(startIndex + 15, 15)

'If the ip is shorter that 15 characters this cuts off any extra characters
        Dim theIp As String = restOfTheLine.TrimEnd("<", ">", "b", "r", "/", "h", "1", " ")

'Close the filestream and streamreader
        Sr.Close()
        Fs.Close()

'Dispose of the source once we get out ip in a String
        Kill("C:\temp\ip.txt")

'Return the ip in string format
        Return theIp

End Function

End Class