Matching an IP address with an IP range?

Question

I have a MySQL table setup as follows:

+---------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field         | Type        | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+---------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| ipaddress_s   | varchar(15) | YES  | MUL | NULL    |                | 
| ipaddress_e   | varchar(16) | YES  |     | NULL    |                | 
+---------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

where, ipaddress_s and ipaddress_e look something like: 4.100.159.0-4.100.159.255

Now is there a way I can actually get the row that contains a given IP address? For instance, given the IP address: "4.100.159.5", I want the above row to be returned. So I am trying for a query that looks something like this (but of course this is wrong because in the following I am considering IPs as strings):

SELECT * FROM ranges WHERE ipaddress_s<"4.100.159.5" AND ipaddress_e>"4.100.159.5"

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

INET_ATON(expr) will change an ip address string into a numeric address that you can use for comparison.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/miscellaneous-functions.html#function_inet-aton

SELECT * FROM ranges WHERE INET_ATON(ipaddress_s)<INET_ATON('4.100.159.0') AND INET_ATON(ipaddress_e)>INET_ATON('4.100.159.5')