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When storing IP in a database, it’s much better to store them as integers rather than VARCHAR(15). Here’s a handy function to convert an IP string to integer and back.

# Converts an IP string to integer
def ip2int(ip)
  return 0 unless ip =~ /d{1,3}.d{1,3}.d{1,3}.d{1,3}/

  v = ip.split('.').collect { |i| i.to_i }
  return (v[0] << 24) | (v[1] << 16) | (v[2] << 8 ) | (v[3]);
end

# Converts an integer to IP string... could be prettier
def int2ip(int)
  tmp = int.to_i
  parts = []

  3.times do |i|
    tmp = tmp / 256.0
    parts << (256 * (tmp - tmp.to_i)).to_i
  end

  parts << tmp.to_i
  parts.reverse.join('.')
end