What are the best practices for storing IPv4 addresses in PHP, and how can they be formatted using ip2long()?
When storing IPv4 addresses in PHP, it is best to use the ip2long() function to convert the IP address into a 32-bit integer for efficient storage and comparison. To format an IPv4 address using ip2long(), simply pass the IP address as a parameter to the function. This will return the integer representation of the IP address, which can then be stored in a database or used for comparisons.
$ip_address = "192.168.1.1";
$ip_integer = ip2long($ip_address);
echo $ip_integer; // Output: 3232235777