NAME

Net::Works::Address - An object representing a single IP (4 or 6) address

VERSION

version 0.22

SYNOPSIS

  use Net::Works::Address;

  my $ip = Net::Works::Address->new_from_string( string => '192.0.2.1' );
  print $ip->as_string();     # 192.0.2.1
  print $ip->as_integer();    # 3221225985
  print $ip->as_binary();     # 4-byte packed form of the address
  print $ip->as_bit_string(); # 11000000000000000000001000000001
  print $ip->version();       # 4
  print $ip->prefix_length();   # 32

  my $next = $ip->next_ip();     # 192.0.2.2
  my $prev = $ip->previous_ip(); # 192.0.2.0

  if ( $next > $ip ) { print $ip->as_string(); }

  my @sorted = sort $next, $prev, $ip;

  my $ipv6 = Net::Works::Address->new_from_string( string => '2001:db8::1234' );
  print $ipv6->as_integer(); # 42540766411282592856903984951653831220

  my $ip_from_int = Net::Works::Address->new_from_integer(
      integer => "42540766411282592856903984951653831220"
  );

DESCRIPTION

Objects of this class represent a single IP address. It can handle both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. It provides various methods for getting information about the address, and also overloads the objects so that addresses can be compared as integers.

For IPv6, it uses 128-bit integers (via Math::Int128) to represent the numeric value of an address.

METHODS

This class provides the following methods:

Net::Works::Address->new_from_string( ... )

This method takes a "string" parameter and an optional "version" parameter. The "string" parameter should be a string representation of an IP address.

The "version" parameter should be either 4 or 6, but you don't really need this unless you're trying to force a dotted quad to be interpreted as an IPv6 address or to a force an IPv6 address colon-separated hex number to be interpreted as an IPv4 address.

Net::Works::Address->new_from_integer( ... )

This method takes a "integer" parameter and an optional "version" parameter. The "integer" parameter should be an integer representation of an IP address.

The "version" parameter should be either 4 or 6. Unlike with strings, you'll need to set the version explicitly to get an IPv6 address.

$ip->as_string()

Returns a string representation of the address in the same format as inet_ntop, e.g., "192.0.2.1", "::192.0.2.1", or "2001:db8::1234".

$ip->as_integer()

Returns the address as an integer. For IPv6 addresses, this is returned as a Math::Int128 object, regardless of the value.

$ip->as_binary()

Returns the packed binary form of the address (4 or 16 bytes).

$ip->as_bit_string()

Returns the address as a string of 1's and 0's, like "00000000000000000000000000010000".

$ip->as_ipv4_string()

This returns a dotted quad representation of an address, even if it's an IPv6 address. However, this will die if the address is greater than the max value of an IPv4 address (2**32 - 1). It's primarily useful for debugging.

$ip->version()

Returns a 4 or 6 to indicate whether this is an IPv4 or IPv6 address.

$ip->prefix_length()

Returns the prefix length for the IP address, which is either 32 (IPv4) or 128 (IPv6).

$ip->bits()

An alias for "$ip->prefix_length()". This helps make addresses & network objects interchangeable in some cases.

$ip->next_ip()

Returns the numerically next IP, regardless of whether or not it's in the same subnet as the current IP.

This will throw an error if the current IP address it the last address in its IP range.

$ip->previous_ip()

Returns the numerically previous IP, regardless of whether or not it's in the same subnet as the current IP.

This will throw an error if the current IP address it the first address in its IP range (address 0).

OVERLOADING

This class overloads comparison, allowing you to compare two objects and to sort them (either as numbers or strings).

It also overloads stringification to call the "$ip->as_string()" method.

AUTHORS

Dave Rolsky <autarch@urth.org>
Greg Oschwald <oschwald@cpan.org>
Olaf Alders <oalders@wundercounter.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.