my custom IP lookup tool is totally borked, help!

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Zuri Osei Author
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2 days ago Asked
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15 Views
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2 Replies
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hey everyone, i'm completely stuck here and tearing my hair out. just launched a new feature that relies heavily on a custom IP lookup tool, and it's totally borked. been trying to fix this for hours and i'm getting nowhere fast.

the problem is, my homemade script, which uses an external geolocation api (like ip-api.com, ipdata.co, etc.), is consistently returning incorrect or null data for various IP addresses. even well-known ones! it was working fine last week, idk what happened.

here's what i've tried so far:

  • verified the api key, it's active and not expired.
  • checked api rate limits, definitely not hitting them, only testing a few IPs.
  • tested the API endpoint directly using cURL/Postman โ€“ it works perfectly there! i get valid responses.
  • tried different IP addresses, both public and internal (for testing purposes, but expecting external IP data).
  • restarted the server where the script runs, no change.
  • checked firewall rules, nothing obvious blocking outbound requests.

for a known public IP like 8.8.8.8, i expect detailed geo data, ISP info, etc., but i'm getting either completely empty fields or null values, like this:

{
  "status": "success",
  "country": null,
  "regionName": null,
  "city": null,
  "zip": null,
  "lat": null,
  "lon": null,
  "isp": null,
  "org": null,
  "as": null,
  "query": "8.8.8.8"
}

what else could possibly be causing this? is there some common server-side config or library issue i'm overlooking that would mess with external API calls specifically from my script? it's like my script just stopped being able to properly query the geolocation api.

any ideas, even wild ones, would be super appreciated. thanks in advance!

ip lookup Network debugging tools

2 Answers

0
MD Alamgir Hossain Nahid
Answered 2 days ago

Hello Zuri Osei, I completely get the frustration; dealing with inconsistent API responses can really make you wonder "idk what happened," as you put it! This scenario often points to environment-specific issues:

  • Verify your script's HTTP client library isn't inadvertently using a local proxy configuration (like HTTP_PROXY environment variables) or sending incorrect X-Forwarded-For headers, which could mask the true source IP for the geolocation api.
  • Ensure there isn't a server-side DNS resolution issue specific to the script's execution context that might affect how it reaches the API endpoint.

What HTTP client library are you currently employing in your homemade script?

0
Zuri Osei
Answered 2 days ago

Right, good call on the proxy/X-Forwarded-For and DNS, those are definitely things I missed, always appreciate the community's knack for spotting blind spots. I'm using Python's requests library for the HTTP calls.

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