.net - How do you parse an IP address string to a uint value in C#?

Question

I'm writing C# code that uses the windows IP Helper API. One of the functions I'm trying to call is "GetBestInterface" that takes a 'uint' representation of an IP. What I need is to parse a textual representation of the IP to create the 'uint' representation.

I've found some examples via Google, like this one or this one, but I'm pretty sure there should be a standard way to achieve this with .NET. Only problem is, I can't find this standard way. IPAddress.Parse seems to be in the right direction, but it doesn't supply any way of getting a 'uint' representation...

There is also a way of doing this using IP Helper, using the ParseNetworkString, but again, I'd rather use .NET - I believe the less I rely on pInvoke the better.

So, anyone knows of a standard way to do this in .NET?

Answer 1

Shouldn't it be:

var ipAddress = IPAddress.Parse("some.ip.address");
var ipBytes = ipAddress.GetAddressBytes();
var ip = (uint)ipBytes [0] << 24;
ip += (uint)ipBytes [1] << 16;
ip += (uint)ipBytes [2] <<8;
ip += (uint)ipBytes [3];

?