How can I get the IP address from a NIC (network interface controller) in Python?

When an error occurs in a Python script on Unix, an email is sent.

I have been asked to add {Testing Environment} to the subject line of the email if the IP address is 192.168.100.37 which is the testing server. This way we can have one version of a script and a way to tell if the email is coming from messed up data on the testing server.

However, when I google I keep finding this code:

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

However, that's giving me the IP address of 127.0.1.1. When I use ifconfig I get this

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1c:c4:2c:c8:3e
          inet addr:192.168.100.37  Bcast:192.168.100.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:75760697 errors:0 dropped:411180 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:23166399 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:59525958247 (59.5 GB)  TX bytes:10142130096 (10.1 GB)
          Interrupt:19 Memory:f0500000-f0520000

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:25573544 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:25573544 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:44531490070 (44.5 GB)  TX bytes:44531490070 (44.5 GB)

Firstly, I don't know where it got 127.0.1.1 from, but either way that's not what I want. When I google I keep coming to the same syntax, Bash scripts or netifaces and I'm trying to use standard libraries.

So how can I get the IP address of eth0 in Python?

Solution

Two methods:

Method #1 (use external package)

You need to ask for the IP address that is bound to your eth0 interface. This is available from the netifaces package

import netifaces as ni
ip = ni.ifaddresses('eth0')[ni.AF_INET][0]['addr']
print(ip)  # should print "192.168.100.37"

You can also get a list of all available interfaces via

ni.interfaces()

Method #2 (no external package)

Here's a way to get the IP address without using a python package:

import socket
import fcntl
import struct

def get_ip_address(ifname):
    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
    return socket.inet_ntoa(fcntl.ioctl(
        s.fileno(),
        0x8915,  # SIOCGIFADDR
        struct.pack('256s', ifname[:15])
    )[20:24])

get_ip_address('eth0')  # '192.168.0.110'

Note: detecting the IP address to determine what environment you are using is quite a hack. Almost all frameworks provide a very simple way to set/modify an environment variable to indicate the current environment. Try and take a look at your documentation for this. It should be as simple as doing

if app.config['ENV'] == 'production':
  # send production email
else:
  # send development email