IP address sorting

Anon

Hi, I'm not sure if this should go in this section or the database, so I will start here.

I have my table setup, and the php code to display it. However I am running into a problem with properly sorting a field that stores IP address's. It starts out fine. Here is an example.

12.82.174.156
12.83.243.244

128.1.0.73
128.100.86.86
..Snipped for brevity
217.96.2.151
217.96.2.155
24.0.0.203
24.0.121.22
24.0.148.207
38.38.149.222
38.38.50.190
4.1.78.38
4.16.19.102
4.54.86.143
47.129.8.121
47.142.226.49
47.142.231.118
47.142.231.129
47.234.129.113
47.234.132.55
56.0.78.69
56.0.78.83
57.55.133.188
61.0.0.58

See how on the first octet it does not sort the way I want. I dont know of a way to fix this. Could it possibly be my field. Right now it is set to varchar, since it has . int it I cant use integer. Any help would be apprciated.

yelvington

There may be a better way, but ... consider converting those IP numbers to longs, sticking them into the db in that format, and converting back to dotted quads when you need to display the results.

That way, a numeric sort in the db should work just dandy.

See the manual for
ip2long()
long2ip()

Both are new in PHP4.

Anybody have any better suggestions?

Anon

Ok I'm new to all of this, but I dont think it will work the way I have it as of now. I already have the ip's in the database. I think what your describing, I need to take and do the conversion before they go into the database, correct?

FYI, php 4.0.4 and mysql 3.22.32
Thanks

yelvington

Rifht.
Unless somebody comes up with a better idea.

Anon

hmmm, not sure what ya want, but if you just want to chop out the dots and store is as such, its easy 🙂

explode it into 4 sections, then combine them.

Including getting the ip...

$ip = $GLOBALS['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$arr = explode(".",$ip);
$oct1 = $arr[0];
$oct2 = $arr[1];
$oct3 = $arr[2];
$oct4 = $arr[3];
$ip_nodots = "$oct1$oct2$oct3$oct4";

$ip_nodots is now the ip without dots (in theory)

so 212.187.65.14 (made up)
is 2121876514, it thats what you want.

kparker

No go, you need to make sure each octet has three digits:

   212.187.65.14
becomes
   212187065014

Anon

nt = no text 🙂

kparker

Huh?

Anon

"No go, you need to make sure each octet has three digits:

212.187.65.14
becomes
212187065014 "

Why do you need to add zeros to make each octet of the IP 3 digits?

Thanks

kparker

Because if you don't, the same sorting problem that the original poster is complaining about can still happen in the subsequent octets.

Anon

ooops, should have got that with what I've been doing! (sorting guestbook entries with $year$month$day$hour$minute$second, having 99 and then 00 really messes it up!