IPv4

IPv4 is a domain based on UInt32 type and serves as a typed replacement for storing IPv4 values. It provides compact storage with the human-friendly input-output format and column type information on inspection.

Basic Usage

CREATE TABLE hits (url String, from IPv4) ENGINE = MergeTree() ORDER BY url;
DESCRIBE TABLE hits;

┌─name─┬─type───┬─default_type─┬─default_expression─┬─comment─┬─codec_expression─┐
│ url  │ String │              │                    │         │                  │
│ from │ IPv4   │              │                    │         │                  │
└──────┴────────┴──────────────┴────────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────────┘

OR you can use IPv4 domain as a key:

CREATE TABLE hits (url String, from IPv4) ENGINE = MergeTree() ORDER BY from;

IPv4 domain supports custom input format as IPv4-strings:

INSERT INTO hits (url, from) VALUES ('https://wikipedia.org', '116.253.40.133')('https://clickhouse.com', '183.247.232.58')('https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/', '116.106.34.242');
SELECT * FROM hits;

┌─url────────────────────────────────┬───────────from─┐
│ https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/ │ 116.106.34.242 │
│ https://wikipedia.org              │ 116.253.40.133 │
│ https://clickhouse.com          │ 183.247.232.58 │
└────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────┘

Values are stored in compact binary form:

SELECT toTypeName(from), hex(from) FROM hits LIMIT 1;

┌─toTypeName(from)─┬─hex(from)─┐
│ IPv4             │ B7F7E83A  │
└──────────────────┴───────────┘

Domain values are not implicitly convertible to types other than UInt32.
If you want to convert IPv4 value to a string, you have to do that explicitly with IPv4NumToString() function:

SELECT toTypeName(s), IPv4NumToString(from) as s FROM hits LIMIT 1;

┌─toTypeName(IPv4NumToString(from))─┬─s──────────────┐
│ String                            │ 183.247.232.58 │
└───────────────────────────────────┴────────────────┘

Or cast to a UInt32 value:

SELECT toTypeName(i), CAST(from as UInt32) as i FROM hits LIMIT 1;

┌─toTypeName(CAST(from, 'UInt32'))─┬──────────i─┐
│ UInt32                           │ 3086477370 │
└──────────────────────────────────┴────────────┘