Merlin’s Delphi Forge

Ever needed to convert a host name to an IP number? There is no direct routine available in Delphi for this but we can always code our way through
Here’s the code with error handling:

uses
Winsock;
…
// The IP number will be returned in string format in the sIP parameter
function HostToIP(sHost: string; var sIP: string): [...]

The drive’s serial number can be useful for for a lot of things (check out previous tip). This example code shows you how to read the hard drives serial number.

function GetHddSerial: Integer;
var
aBuffer: array [0..255] of Char;
dwTemp: DWord;
pdwSerial: PDWord;
begin
if GetVolumeInformation(’c:’, aBuffer, SizeOf(aBuffer), @pdwSerial, dwTemp, dwTemp, nil, 0) then
[...]