Can't get public IP address from ESP8266 using ipify - arduino

Question

I'm using NodeMCU to use ESP8266 and I want to use ipify to get public IP address.
But I get -1 on httpCode. Why is that?
If I type api.ipify.org, it gets my public IP address properly.
void loop() {
Serial.println(WiFi.status());
if (WiFi.status() == WL_CONNECTED) { //Check WiFi connection status
Serial.println("az");
HTTPClient http; //Declare an object of class HTTPClient
http.begin("https://api.ipify.org/?format=json"); //Specify request destination
int httpCode = http.GET(); //Send the request
Serial.println(httpCode); //<<---- Here I get -1
if (httpCode > 0) { //Check the returning code
String payload = http.getString(); //Get the request response payload
Serial.println(payload); //Print the response payload
}
http.end(); //Close connection
}
delay(10000); //Send a request every 30 seconds
}

Answer 1

http.begin("https://api.ipify.org/?format=json");
You are using your HTTPClient to browse a HTTPS website (HTTP + SSL/TLS tunnel), but you're using the wrong .begin() call. The begin(String url call expects a http:// URL, not a https://. If you want to securely browse the website using HTTPS, you need to use the function begin(String url, String httpsFingerprint) (link). You can find the needed httpsFingerprint by following this guide. Using HTTPS will induce a whole lot of memory overhead and processing time, though. For the case of browsing a "what is my public IP" website, I would just advise to browse the http:// version instead, since the response is not confidential information.
So, you could just do
http.begin("http://api.ipify.org/?format=json");

Answer 2

You can try:
String getIp()
{
WiFiClient client;
if (client.connect("api.ipify.org", 80))
{
Serial.println("connected");
client.println("GET / HTTP/1.0");
client.println("Host: api.ipify.org");
client.println();
} else {
Serial.println("Connection to ipify.org failed");
return String();
}
delay(5000);
String line;
while(client.available())
{
line = client.readStringUntil('\n');
Serial.println(line);
}
return line;
}