# Suggestion for Cloudflare template to get real IP from users

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/suggestion-for-cloudflare-template-to-get-real-ip-from-users/246925>\
**Category:** Self-hosting\
**Created:** [November 28, 2022, 11:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/suggestion-for-cloudflare-template-to-get-real-ip-from-users/246925 "2022-11-28T11:24:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![daniel88](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/daniel88/32/283683_2.png) [@daniel88](https://meta.discourse.org/u/daniel88)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2022, 11:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/suggestion-for-cloudflare-template-to-get-real-ip-from-users/246925/1 "2022-11-28T11:24:23Z")

</div>

hi all,

I just found out the long and hard way about Cloudflare’s `real_ip_header CF-Connecting-IP;` setting in nginx…

I have a fairly complicated setup with nginx proxy manager being in it’s own docker image (I’m using [SWAG from linuxserver.io](https://docs.linuxserver.io/general/swag), which is awesome BTW), so the connection path looks like this:  
`User -> Cloudflare -> Server(1st docker container: Nginx -> 2nd docker container: Discourse)`

I have both docker containers in the same docker network, so they communicate; that’s fine.  
I had a real issue trying to get the user’s origin IP in the Discourse logs. I read up all the nice threads here and added the cloudflare template to my app.yml file, but it still didn’t work…

After pulling my hair out, I realized that the issue was not the Cloudflare template per se, but the fact that the Discourse container was getting the IP address from the NGINX container and I had to add the docker network IP CIDR to the set\_real\_ip\_from like this:  
`set_real_ip_from 172.18.0.0/16;`

In order to help future hosters, would it be possible to add this line to the cloudflare template? The IP range 172.18.0.0/16 is anyway private, so even if you don’t have NPM in a docker container, it will not hurt to add this range.

My suggestion would be to change this line in cloudflare.template.yml:  
`sed -i "/sendfile on;/a $CONTENTS\nreal_ip_header CF-Connecting-IP;" /etc/nginx/conf.d/discourse.conf`  
to this line:  
`sed -i "/sendfile on;/a set_real_ip_from 172.18.0.0/16;\n$CONTENTS\nreal_ip_header CF-Connecting-IP;" /etc/nginx/conf.d/discourse.conf`

What do you think?

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