gethostbyname function returns domain name instead of IP address in PHP

Question

I want to get machine IP address in PHP so i am using function

<?php echo gethostbyname($serverName); ?>

Its works for all my server machine but it returns domain name for particular IP address for some machine. I don't know why its returning domain name for particular machine and how to get IP address of that particular machine.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

According to docs

Returns the IPv4 address or a string containing the unmodified hostname on failure.

Failure reasons may be couple (e.g. wrong domain name, unreachable host or network problems)