How to convert string to IP address and vice versa

Question

how can I convert a string ipAddress (struct in_addr) and vice versa? and how do I turn in unsigned long ipAddress? thanks

Answer 1

here's easy-to-use, thread-safe c++ functions to convert uint32_t native-endian to string, and string to native-endian uint32_t:

#include  // inet_ntop & inet_pton
#include  // strerror_r
#include  // ntohl & htonl
using namespace std; // im lazy

string ipv4_int_to_string(uint32_t in, bool *const success = nullptr)
{
    string ret(INET_ADDRSTRLEN, '\0');
    in = htonl(in);
    const bool _success = (NULL != inet_ntop(AF_INET, &in, &ret[0], ret.size()));
    if (success)
    {
        *success = _success;
    }
    if (_success)
    {
        ret.pop_back(); // remove null-terminator required by inet_ntop
    }
    else if (!success)
    {
        char buf[200] = {0};
        strerror_r(errno, buf, sizeof(buf));
        throw std::runtime_error(string("error converting ipv4 int to string ") + to_string(errno) + string(": ") + string(buf));
    }
    return ret;
}
// return is native-endian
// when an error occurs: if success ptr is given, it's set to false, otherwise a std::runtime_error is thrown.
uint32_t ipv4_string_to_int(const string &in, bool *const success = nullptr)
{
    uint32_t ret;
    const bool _success = (1 == inet_pton(AF_INET, in.c_str(), &ret));
    ret = ntohl(ret);
    if (success)
    {
        *success = _success;
    }
    else if (!_success)
    {
        char buf[200] = {0};
        strerror_r(errno, buf, sizeof(buf));
        throw std::runtime_error(string("error converting ipv4 string to int ") + to_string(errno) + string(": ") + string(buf));
    }
    return ret;
}

fair warning, as of writing, they're un-tested. but these functions are exactly what i was looking for when i came to this thread.