How do I get the private IP address of the computer that I am using in python?

Question

Stackoverflow does not seem to have something about public IP addresses in python, so I am asking a question. I have a raspberry pi, and upon start up, I want it to check for its global ip address and its private ip address, and if possible, post it to Twitter. Is there any way to do all of this? I know about the twython module, but I have never used it before.

Answer 1

First, you have to go to twitter.com and create an account, and then dev.twitter.com/apps to create your app, from which you get your APP_KEY, APP_SECRET, OAUTH_TOKEN, and OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET. Remember to NEVER share this information, for it will cause anyone to automatically be able to tweet from your twitter account. To get your public ip address, type curl ifconfig.me, and it will print it. However, you cannot do this in a python program. To go around this, use a module like pycurl or go to http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/index.html to learn more. To get your private IP address, use this:

import socket
socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())

Here is the twitter documentation:

from twython import Twython
twitter = Twython(APP_KEY, APP_SECRET, OAUTH_TOKEN, OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET)
twitter.update_status(status='See how easy using Twython is!')

You can change update_status to print your variables for the public and private IP address.

Here is how to run a program on a Pi when starting up, type this into your shell:

cd /
sudo crontab -e

This will nano the file crontab. At the very end of this file, add @reboot /home/pi/myscript.py, and on startup, it will run the program. Hope this helps!