Question

I’m writing a chat-server in node.js, and I want to store connected users IP-addresses in a mysql database as (unsigned) integers.
I have written a javascript method to convert an ip-address as string to an integer. I get some strange results however.

Here is my code:

function ipToInt(ip) {
    var parts = ip.split(".");
    var res = 0;

    res += parseInt(parts[0], 10) << 24;
    res += parseInt(parts[1], 10) << 16;
    res += parseInt(parts[2], 10) << 8;
    res += parseInt(parts[3], 10);

    return res;
}

When I run call the method as ipToInt("192.168.2.44"); the result I get is -1062731220.
It seems like an overflow has occurred, which is strange, because the expected output (3232236076) is inside the number range in javascript (2^52).

When I inspect -1062731220 in binary form, I can see the 3232236076 is preserved, but filled with leading 1’s.

I’m not sure, but I think the problem is with signed vs. unsigned integers.

Can any of you explain what is going on?
And possibly how to parse -1062731220 back to an string ip?

Answer 1

Why is the converted IP negative?

It’s NOT an overflow. The first part of your IP address is 192 which converts to 11000000 in binary. You then shift that all the way to the left. When there is a 1 in the leftmost position of a 32 bit number, it’s negative.

How do you convert back to a string?

Do the same thing you did to convert from a string but in reverse. Shift right (and mask)!

function intToIP(int) {
    var part1 = int & 255;
    var part2 = ((int >> 8) & 255);
    var part3 = ((int >> 16) & 255);
    var part4 = ((int >> 24) & 255);

    return part4 + "." + part3 + "." + part2 + "." + part1;
}

Why reinvent the wheel? From Google:

OR, you can use what I found here:
http://javascript.about.com/library/blipconvert.htm

function dot2num(dot) 
{
    var d = dot.split('.');
    return ((((((+d[0])*256)+(+d[1]))*256)+(+d[2]))*256)+(+d[3]);
}

function num2dot(num) 
{
    var d = num%256;
    for (var i = 3; i > 0; i--) 
    { 
        num = Math.floor(num/256);
        d = num%256 + '.' + d;
    }
    return d;
}