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Converting IP Addresses and Hostnames

Even if your server does not provide you with a $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'] variable, you will probably know the IP address of a visitor from the $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] environment variable. You can use this in conjunction with the function gethostbyaddr() to get the user's hostname. gethostbyaddr() requires a string representing an IP address and returns the equivalent hostname. If an error occurs, it returns the IP address it was given. Listing 14.5 creates a script that uses gethostbyaddr() to acquire the user's hostname if the $REMOTE_HOST variable is unavailable.

Listing 14.5 Using gethostbyaddr() to Get a Hostname
 1: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
 2:  "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
 3:  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
 4: <html>
 5: <head>
 6: <title>Listing 14.5 Using gethostbyaddr() to get a host name</title>
 7: </head>
 8: <body>
 9: <div>
10: <?php
11: if ( ! empty( $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'] ) ) {
12:   print "Hello visitor at ".$_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'];
13: } else if ( ! empty( $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] ) ) {
14:    print "Hello visitor at ";
15:    print gethostbyaddr( $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] );
16: } else {
17:   print "Hello you, wherever you are";
18: }
19: ?>
20: </div>
21: </body>
22: </html>

If we have access to the $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'] element, we simply print this to the browser on line 12. Otherwise, if we have access to the $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] element, we attempt to acquire the user's hostname using gethostbyaddr() on line 15. If all else fails, we print a generic welcome message on line 17.

To attempt to convert a hostname to an IP address, you can use gethostbyname(). This function requires a hostname as its argument. It returns an IP address or, if an error occurs, the hostname you provided.

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