Advanced IP Address String Matching for PostgreSQL

While PostgreSQL has native support for IP addresses, there are use cases for text columns when you either have a legacy database schema or need more control over how addresses are stored.

IPLIKE is a PostgreSQL plugin for doing wildcard-like IP address matching using a simple rule grammar.

Building from Source

Preparing a Git Checkout for Building

If you checked IPLIKE out from Git, you will need to prepare the build directory. If you downloaded a source tarball you can skip this step.

You will need to have GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool installed.

git submodule init
git submodule update
autoreconf -fvi

Building

Building uses the standard GNU Autoconf process:

./configure
make
sudo make install

If your PostgreSQL is in a non-standard location, you can compile against it by passing --with-pgsql=/path/to/pg_config to the ./configure command.

Creating RPM Packages

If RPM is detected, the source build will also have support for building RPM packages. Just run:

./configure
make rpm

Creating Debian/Ubuntu Packages

Debian IPLIKE packages are named to match the PostgreSQL version they are built against, so that multiple IPLIKE packages can be installed at the same time (iplike-pgsql9.5, iplike-pgsql10, and so on).

For this reason, you first must run configure before doing the normal Debian packaging process.

./configure
dpkg-buildpackage

Installing IPLIKE to PostgreSQL

You should be able to run the install_iplike.sh script to insert IPLIKE into your database. By default it will associate it with a database called opennms, but you can choose a different database by passing the -d flag (eg, -d template1).

Using IPLIKE

IPLIKE uses a very flexible search format, allowing you to separate the octets (fields) of an IPv4 or IPv6 address into specific searches. An asterisk (*) in place of any octet matches any value for that octet. Ranges are indicated by two numbers separated by a dash (-), and commas are used for lists of matching octets.

Example Queries

Match all addresses from 192.168.0.0 through 192.168.255.255:

• SELECT iplike(ipaddr, '192.168.*.*');
• SELECT iplike(ipaddr, '192.168.0-255.0-255');
• SELECT iplike(ipaddr, '192.168.*.0-255');

Match any link-local IPv6 address:

• SELECT iplike(ipaddr, 'fe80:*:*:*:*:*:*:*');

Releasing packages

Creating a release is triggered by pushing a version tag following the semantic versioning schema using v{major}.{minor}.{patch}, e.g. v2.3.1. The main branch is equivalent to the latest released version. The steps to prepare and publish a release:

1. Create a changelog entry in the debian/changelog.tmpl file with the changes and the new version number.
2. Set the version in version.m4 file
3. Commit to the main branch and verify if CI/CD goes green
4. Push a version tag from main to publish the release
5. Fill the release notes with the same content as the debian/changelog.tmpl entry

Important

The version number in the debian/changelog.tmpl drives the Debian package version number and is important.