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What’s Calling Your Fastify API? Trace Requests and Identify Callers

Fastify can help you trace requests through IDs, network metadata, headers, and logs. Learn what those clues reveal, how to configure proxy trust, and how to identify authenticated callers safely.
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To find what is calling your Fastify API, log request-scoped details such as request.id, request.ip, the method and route, and selected headers. If the service sits behind a proxy, configure Fastify’s trustProxy for the actual trusted proxy chain before relying on forwarded addresses. These clues can help locate and categorize traffic, but only your application’s verified authentication context can identify an authenticated user or service.

What Fastify can tell you about an incoming request

Fastify exposes several kinds of request metadata. They answer different questions, so treat them as evidence with different limits rather than as interchangeable ways to name a caller.

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Signal Useful for What it does not establish
request.id Correlating a request with its log entries and, if your application propagates a trustworthy ID, related activity elsewhere. The caller’s identity. If request-ID headers are enabled, an incoming value may be chosen by the client unless your application validates or replaces it.
request.ip Inspecting the socket address by default, or a forwarded address when proxy trust is configured. A person or account. A proxy, gateway, or shared network address may represent infrastructure used by multiple callers.
request.ips Inspecting the forwarded address chain when trustProxy is enabled. A verified origin if the forwarding chain includes untrusted or spoofed data.
Selected headers, such as user-agent Debugging and rough traffic categorization. Authenticated identity; headers are supplied by the client and can be forged.
Application authentication result Naming the verified API-key owner, token subject, or service principal when your authentication layer establishes one. Anything beyond the claims and guarantees of your particular authentication implementation.

Fastify’s Request reference says that request.ip, request.ips, and related host and protocol fields come from socket and/or forwarding metadata and “should also be treated as untrusted input.” An IP address is therefore a network clue, not proof of who made a request.

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Log request details with Fastify

Fastify logging is disabled by default. Enable it when creating the instance, for example with { logger: true } or { logger: { level: 'info' } }. When enabled, the default logger is Pino, and request.log gives you a request-scoped logger for adding context to that request’s log entries. See the Fastify Logging guide.

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A compact onRequest hook can record a useful starting set of fields:

fastify.addHook('onRequest', async (request) => {
  request.log.info({
    method: request.method,
    route: request.routeOptions.url,
    requestId: request.id,
    remoteIp: request.ip,
    userAgent: request.headers['user-agent']
  }, 'incoming request')
})

This is an implementation pattern, not a guarantee that those fields will identify the caller. Adapt the route field to your Fastify version and logging needs. Treat every incoming header value, including user-agent, as untrusted.

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Check proxy trust before using client IPs

Without proxy trust, request.ip is based on the socket address. With trustProxy enabled, Fastify may derive it from X-Forwarded-For; request.ips exposes the forwarded chain only when proxy trust is enabled.

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Configure trust to match the real deployment: trust known proxy addresses or use a trust function that validates the immediate peer. Do not blindly trust every source if clients can also reach the Fastify origin directly. A direct client can otherwise supply misleading forwarding metadata. Consult the Fastify Server reference and use documentation for the Fastify major version installed in your application; the latest documentation is rolling and configuration details can change.

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Use authentication context to name a caller

If the question is “Which account or service authenticated?”, inspect the result established by your application’s authentication middleware or hook—for example, a verified API-key owner or token subject. Fastify’s request metadata does not supply that identity by itself. Do not infer a user from an IP, request ID, user-agent, or arbitrary header.

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Keep request logs useful and safe

  • Log an intentional allow-list, such as method, route, request ID, IP metadata, and a carefully selected non-sensitive header.
  • Do not dump all headers. Fastify warns that logging response headers can expose sensitive authentication data and may create privacy risks. Redact credentials such as req.headers.authorization wherever headers are logged.
  • Avoid logging full request bodies unless there is a specific, safe need. Request bodies are not yet parsed when request serializers run; the Logging guide points to a preHandler hook if body logging is genuinely required. Sensitive body data should be avoided or tightly controlled.

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