What are the potential pitfalls of storing IPv6 addresses as VARBINARY in MySQL and comparing them with PHP's INET6_ATON function?

Storing IPv6 addresses as VARBINARY in MySQL can lead to potential pitfalls when comparing them with PHP's INET6_ATON function due to differences in how the addresses are stored and interpreted. To solve this issue, it is recommended to store IPv6 addresses in MySQL as a string using the INET6_NTOA function to convert them to a human-readable format before storing them. 

// Convert IPv6 address to a string using INET6_NTOA before storing in MySQL
$ipv6Address = "2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334";
$ipv6String = inet_ntop(inet_pton($ipv6Address));

// Store $ipv6String in MySQL as a string

// Retrieve stored IPv6 address from MySQL and compare with PHP's INET6_ATON function
$storedIPv6 = "2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334";
$storedIPv6Binary = inet_pton($storedIPv6);
$compareIPv6 = inet_pton($ipv6Address);

if ($storedIPv6Binary === $compareIPv6) {
    echo "IPv6 addresses match";
} else {
    echo "IPv6 addresses do not match";
}

Keywords

IPv6 addresses VARBINARY MySQL INET6_ATON comparison

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