Question

I am trying to convert an address specified by an IP number or a name, both in String (i.e. localhost or 127.0.0.1), into an InetAdress object. There’s no constructor but rather static methods that return an InetAddress. So if I get a host name it’s not a problem, but what if I get the IP number? There’s one method that gets byte[] but I’m not sure how that can help me. All other methods gets the host name.

InetAddress API documentation

Answer 1

You should be able to use getByName or getByAddress.

The host name can either be a machine
name, such as “java.sun.com”, or a
textual representation of its IP
address

InetAddress addr = InetAddress.getByName("127.0.0.1");

The method that takes a byte array can be used like this:

byte[] ipAddr = new byte[]{127, 0, 0, 1};
InetAddress addr = InetAddress.getByAddress(ipAddr);