VPNDetection Ruby Client Library

The official Ruby client library for the VPNDetection API.

The library helps you query VPNDetection's APIs for anonymity detection including VPNs, residential proxies, Tor nodes, hosting servers, CDNs, relays and more.

gem install vpndetection

Or add it to your Gemfile:

gem 'vpndetection'

Requires Ruby 3.3 or newer.

No API key needed to start. The free tier answers ip and is_vpn, and allows 1000 requests per day per source address.

require 'vpndetection'

client = VPNDetection::Client.new

result = client.lookup('45.83.91.1')
result.is_vpn   # => true

An API key raises your quota, and raises your features on a paid plan. Create one in the console, then pass it in:

client = VPNDetection::Client.new(api_key: ENV['VPNDETECTION_API_KEY'])

result = client.lookup('45.83.91.1')
result.is_vpn               # => true
result.vpn['provider']      # => "mullvad"
result.is_hosting           # => true
result.hosting['provider']  # => "M247"

result = client.my_ip
result.ip   # => the address we saw this call come from

Same answer lookup would give for that address, and the same cost against your allowance. It is deliberately not cached: which address you are is the whole question, and a machine that moves between networks would otherwise be told where it used to be.

acct = client.my_entitlement
acct.plan.key          # => "max"
acct.usage.requests    # => 580
acct.usage.window_end  # => when the allowance resets

Usage counts against the anniversary of your subscription, not the calendar month and not the billing period, and it is the same number a lookup is gated on. hard_limit is nil on an uncapped plan, which is not the same as zero.

Look up as many addresses as you like at once. Bogons and cached answers are handled locally, and everything else goes to the batch endpoint in chunks of up to 1000 addresses, in parallel:

results = client.lookup_batch(['45.83.91.1', '8.8.8.8', '1.1.1.1'])

results.each do |ip, result|
  if result.is_a?(VPNDetection::Error)
    warn "#{ip}: #{result.message}"
    next
  end
  puts "#{ip}: #{result.is_vpn}"
end

Results are keyed by address, in the order you first listed each one, so duplicates in your list collapse into a single entry and one address failing never loses the rest: it carries its error as its value, with the status the API would have given that address on its own.

How many chunks are in flight at once, how many times a failed chunk is retried, and how long each chunk's request may take are configurable per call:

results = client.lookup_batch(many_ips, concurrency: 4, retries: 4, timeout: 5)

Answers are cached by default, so repeat lookups of the same address are free:

client = VPNDetection::Client.new

result = client.lookup('45.83.91.1')
result.is_vpn    # => true, API request

result2 = client.lookup('45.83.91.1')
result2.is_vpn   # => true, no API request, result was cached

You can change the default cache variables (max size, TTL in seconds) on initialization, or even disable it:

client = VPNDetection::Client.new(cache_max_size: 50_000, cache_ttl: 6 * 60 * 60)
client_no_cache = VPNDetection::Client.new(cache: false)

Private, loopback, link-local, documentation and multicast addresses (and their IPv6 equivalents, including the 6to4 and Teredo ranges) can never be VPN or proxy infrastructure. The library answers them locally, so they cost no request and no quota:

result = client.lookup('192.168.1.1')
result.bogon?    # => true, this answer was computed rather than served
result.is_vpn    # => false

The check is available on the client, which is handy when your inputs are addresses anyway:

client.bogon?('10.0.0.1')   # => true
client.bogon?('8.8.8.8')    # => false

It is also on the module itself, if you want it without a client:

VPNDetection.bogon?('10.0.0.1')   # => true

Failures raise a VPNDetection::Error carrying a kind and a retryable? flag:

begin
  client.lookup('1.1.1.1')
rescue VPNDetection::Error => e
  warn "#{e.kind} #{e.retryable?}: #{e.message}"
end

kind is one of :bad_request, :unauthorized, :forbidden, :rate_limited, :quota_exceeded, :server_error or :network.

Note that :rate_limited and :quota_exceeded both arrive as HTTP 429 and are not the same thing. A rate limit is when the API faces extreme traffic bursts and so retrying later works; but a spent quota needs your allowance raised or the window to roll over. The library retries rate limits for you, but not if your quota is exceeded. It waits the Retry-After the API sent, or its own backoff from 250 ms when that's past about 24.8 days.

client = VPNDetection::Client.new(timeout: 10, retries: 4)

result = client.lookup('45.83.91.1', timeout: 2, retries: 0)

timeout is in seconds and bounds each attempt, body included, so a call that is retried can take longer in total. It defaults to 30 seconds, and 0 means no bound; before 5.2.0 the default was 10, so pass timeout: 10 to keep that bound. The client's values are defaults: lookup, lookup_batch, my_ip and my_entitlement each take timeout: and retries: for that call alone, and every client.oauth method and every client.database call that is not a transfer takes timeout: (from 5.3.0). A database download bounds only its connection with it, because a whole transfer can take minutes. A negative value, anything that isn't a number, and anything past 2147483.647 seconds (the longest curl holds) raise ArgumentError where you pass them, before any request.

If your key carries the db.download scope, the licensed databases are available through client.database. A license covers a database FAMILY and a download names one of its versions, so the id comes from versions:

family = client.database.list.first
id = family.versions.last.id

written = client.database.download(id, 'mmdb', './vpn_ip_extended_v1.mmdb')
url = client.database.download_url(id, 'mmdb')
bytes = client.database.download_bytes('cdn_ip_v1', 'csvgz')

download streams straight to disk, so nothing bigger than a chunk is ever held in memory whatever the database weighs, and it writes through a neighboring .part file so a transfer that dies half way leaves no truncated copy behind. download_url hands back the time-limited link and follows nothing, for when you want to run the transfer yourself. download_bytes holds the whole file in memory, and the catalog runs from cdn_ip_v1 at 10 KB to resproxy_ip_90d_v1 at 1.79 GB, so reach for download for anything you have not measured.

From 5.3.0, list, metadata, checksums, downloads and download_url each take timeout: in seconds for that call alone, overriding the client's for one attempt of it:

catalog = client.database.list(timeout: 5)
sums = client.database.checksums(id, 'mmdb', timeout: 5)

download and download_bytes deliberately take no timeout: and raise ArgumentError if handed one, rather than accepting it and quietly doing nothing: a transfer runs to gigabytes and minutes, so any bound that suits a JSON call would abandon a healthy download. download_url does take one, because minting the link is an ordinary API request - it bounds that request, not whatever you do with the link afterwards.

A program running on a person's own machine can let them sign in with their browser and pick one of their API keys, instead of asking them to paste one.

client = VPNDetection::Client.new
device = client.oauth.device_authorization('your-client-id', scope: 'account.read apikeys.read apikeys.reveal')
puts "Open #{device.verification_uri} and enter #{device.user_code}"

token = client.oauth.poll_device_token('your-client-id', device)
raise 'no API key was picked' if token.apikey.nil?

keyed = VPNDetection::Client.new(api_key: token.apikey)

poll_device_token raises VPNDetection::OauthAccessDeniedError when the person refuses and VPNDetection::OauthExpiredTokenError when the code expires first. Client IDs are issued on request from support@vpndetection.io, and client.oauth.revoke('your-client-id', token.refresh_token) signs the machine out.

Every field beyond ip and is_vpn is present when your plan includes it and nil when it does not. nil means "not in your plan"; false means "we checked, and no".

result.hosting?                 # false when absent, for when you only want the flag
result.included?(:is_hosting)   # whether your plan carries the field at all

There are official VPNDetection client libraries available for many languages including PHP, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, and many popular frameworks such as Django, Rails, and Laravel. See our GitHub at https://github.com/vpndetection-io for more.

VPN Detection API: Accurate anonymity detection identifying VPNs, residential proxies, hosting servers, Tor nodes, CDNs, relays and more.

This project is licensed under the MIT License.