How To Encode IP Address in MySql Database With PHP

if you want to insert user information like the user's ip address, but don't want to put the dots in the ip address, there is a better way. like many forums websited, for example, phpbb, they encode the ip address of the poster, so they use this fucnctions to encode and decode, its an effecient way to manage information in your database.
here and example:

function encode_ip($dotquad_ip){
    $ip_sep = explode('.', $dotquad_ip);
    return sprintf('%02x%02x%02x%02x', $ip_sep[0], $ip_sep[1], $ip_sep[2], $ip_sep[3]);
}
function decode_ip($int_ip){
  $hexipbang = explode('.', chunk_split($int_ip, 2, '.'));
  return hexdec($hexipbang[0]). '.' . hexdec($hexipbang[1]) . '.' . hexdec($hexipbang[2]) . '.' . hexdec($hexipbang[3]);
}