Python's socket library has utilities for converting from a network byte order to host byte order and vice versa. You may want to become familiar with them, for example, ntohl()/htonl().

Let us define the convert_integer() function, where the ntohl()/htonl() socket class functions are used to convert IP address formats.

Listing 1.5 shows integer_conversion as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env python 
# This program is optimized for Python 2.7.12 and Python 3.5.2. 
# It may run on any other version with/without modifications. 
 
import socket 
 
def convert_integer(): 
    data = 1234 
    # 32-bit 
    print ("Original: %s => Long  host byte order: %s, Network byte order: %s" %(data, socket.ntohl(data), socket.htonl(data))) 
    # 16-bit 
    print ("Original: %s => Short  host byte order: %s, Network byte order: %s" %(data, socket.ntohs(data), socket.htons(data))) 
 
     
if __name__ == '__main__': 
    convert_integer() 
 

If you run this recipe, you will see the following output:

$ python 11_5_integer_conversion.py 
Original: 1234 => Long  host byte order: 3523477504, 
Network byte order: 3523477504
Original: 1234 => Short  host byte order: 53764, 
Network byte order: 53764