How to validate IP address in Python?

Question

What's the best way to validate that an IP entered by the user is valid? It comes in as a string.

Answer 1

I think this would do it...

def validIP(address):
    parts = address.split(".")
    if len(parts) != 4:
        return False
    for item in parts:
        if not 0 <= int(item) <= 255:
            return False
    return True

Answer 2

def is_valid_ip(ip):
    """Validates IP addresses.
    """
    return is_valid_ipv4(ip) or is_valid_ipv6(ip)

IPv4:

def is_valid_ipv4(ip):
    """Validates IPv4 addresses.
    """
    pattern = re.compile(r"""
        ^
        (?:
          # Dotted variants:
          (?:
            # Decimal 1-255 (no leading 0's)
            [3-9]\d?|2(?:5[0-5]|[0-4]?\d)?|1\d{0,2}
          |
            0x0*[0-9a-f]{1,2}  # Hexadecimal 0x0 - 0xFF (possible leading 0's)
          |
            0+[1-3]?[0-7]{0,2} # Octal 0 - 0377 (possible leading 0's)
          )
          (?:                  # Repeat 0-3 times, separated by a dot
            \.
            (?:
              [3-9]\d?|2(?:5[0-5]|[0-4]?\d)?|1\d{0,2}
            |
              0x0*[0-9a-f]{1,2}
            |
              0+[1-3]?[0-7]{0,2}
            )
          ){0,3}
        |
          0x0*[0-9a-f]{1,8}    # Hexadecimal notation, 0x0 - 0xffffffff
        |
          0+[0-3]?[0-7]{0,10}  # Octal notation, 0 - 037777777777
        |
          # Decimal notation, 1-4294967295:
          429496729[0-5]|42949672[0-8]\d|4294967[01]\d\d|429496[0-6]\d{3}|
          42949[0-5]\d{4}|4294[0-8]\d{5}|429[0-3]\d{6}|42[0-8]\d{7}|
          4[01]\d{8}|[1-3]\d{0,9}|[4-9]\d{0,8}
        )
        $
    """, re.VERBOSE | re.IGNORECASE)
    return pattern.match(ip) is not None

IPv6:

def is_valid_ipv6(ip):
    """Validates IPv6 addresses.
    """
    pattern = re.compile(r"""
        ^
        \s*                         # Leading whitespace
        (?!.*::.*::)                # Only a single whildcard allowed
        (?:(?!:)|:(?=:))            # Colon iff it would be part of a wildcard
        (?:                         # Repeat 6 times:
            [0-9a-f]{0,4}           #   A group of at most four hexadecimal digits
            (?:(?<=::)|(?<!::):)    #   Colon unless preceeded by wildcard
        ){6}                        #
        (?:                         # Either
            [0-9a-f]{0,4}           #   Another group
            (?:(?<=::)|(?<!::):)    #   Colon unless preceeded by wildcard
            [0-9a-f]{0,4}           #   Last group
            (?: (?<=::)             #   Colon iff preceeded by exacly one colon
             |  (?<!:)              #
             |  (?<=:) (?<!::) :    #
             )                      # OR
         |                          #   A v4 address with NO leading zeros 
            (?:25[0-4]|2[0-4]\d|1\d\d|[1-9]?\d)
            (?: \.
                (?:25[0-4]|2[0-4]\d|1\d\d|[1-9]?\d)
            ){3}
        )
        \s*                         # Trailing whitespace
        $
    """, re.VERBOSE | re.IGNORECASE | re.DOTALL)
    return pattern.match(ip) is not None

The IPv6 version uses "(?:(?<=::)|(?<!::):)", which could be replaced with "(?(?<!::):)" on regex engines that support conditionals with look-arounds. (i.e. PCRE, .NET)

Edit:

• Dropped the native variant.
• Expanded the regex to comply with the RFC.
• Added another regex for IPv6 addresses.

Edit2:

I found some links discussing how to parse IPv6 addresses with regex:

• A Regular Expression for IPv6 Addresses - InterMapper Forums
• Working IPv6 regular expression - Patrick’s playground blog
• test-ipv6-regex.pl - Perl script with tons of test-cases. It seems my regex fails on a few of those tests.

Edit3:

Finally managed to write a pattern that passes all tests, and that I am also happy with.

Answer 3

Don't parse it. Just ask.

import socket

try:
    socket.inet_aton(addr)
    # legal
except socket.error:
    # Not legal

Answer 4

The IPy module (a module designed for dealing with IP addresses) will throw a ValueError exception for invalid addresses.

>>> from IPy import IP
>>> IP('127.0.0.1')
IP('127.0.0.1')
>>> IP('277.0.0.1')
Traceback (most recent call last):
 ...
ValueError: '277.0.0.1': single byte must be 0 <= byte < 256
>>> IP('foobar')
Traceback (most recent call last):
 ...
ValueError: invalid literal for long() with base 10: 'foobar'

However, like Dustin's answer, it will accept things like "4" and "192.168" since, as mentioned, these are valid representations of IP addresses.

Answer 5

if the following script is hosted on a webserver, it should print out visitors Ip address. You can also put it in a database by assigning it to a variable:

'import os

 print 'Content-Type:text/html'
 print 

 print os.environ["REMOTE_ADDR"]' 

Answer 6

import socket

def is_valid_ipv4_address(address):
    try:
        addr= socket.inet_pton(socket.AF_INET, address)
    except AttributeError: # no inet_pton here, sorry
        try:
            addr= socket.inet_aton(address)
        except socket.error:
            return False
        return address.count('.') == 3
    except socket.error: # not a valid address
        return False

    return True

def is_valid_ipv6_address(address):
    try:
        addr= socket.inet_pton(socket.AF_INET6, address)
    except socket.error: # not a valid address
        return False
    return True