Add "Domain Availability Search" functionality.

Posts: 5 · Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2007 5:23 pm

I am basically trying to figure out if it is possible to add the ability for my clients to Lookup Domain Availability from my website. I want them to purchase it through me and then I will purchase it through hostmysite. That way I can mark it up a little.

Any ideas.

Posts: 570 · Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2007 7:15 pm

You most certainly can. It's fairy easy. But first, what language do you want to use?

Posts: 5 · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 11:36 pm

I completally forgot about this post...

if you are still out there, i am most comfortable with php

Posts: 858 · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 11:33 pm

We actually have an API that you can use for this; just contact support and they can give you access to it.

Posts: 192 · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 4:07 pm

I wrote my own WHOIS lookup script:

http://neranjara.org/tools/whois
http://neranjara.org/tools/ipwhois

It's fairly straightforward once you read the relevant documentation.

Simply open up a socket to the whois server and shoot the domain through. Once there the whois server will spit back the info you're looking for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHOIS

whois-servers.net is a great domain whose subdomains point to the corresponding whois server IE:

Code:

$ dig +short org.whois-servers.net
whois.publicinterestregistry.net.
149.17.192.7

$ dig +short net.whois-servers.net
whois.verisign-grs.com.
199.7.51.74

So you simply connect on port 43 to the corresponding domain, write your domain on the socket followed by a carriage return and line feed ("\r\n"), and read the resulting output.

This is how the whois tool on Linux works at least, so I modeled my tool after it, and it works wonders. IPWhois is a similar scenario only there are a limited number of IPWHOIS servers:

Code:

<?php
$servers = array('ARIN' => 'whois.arin.net',
'RIPE' => 'whois.ripe.net',
'APNIC' => 'whois.apnic.net',
'LACNIC' => 'whois.lacnic.net',
'AfriNIC' => 'whois.afrinic.net' );

Posts: 192 · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 4:29 pm

I rewrote this based on my personal code:

Code:

<?php
/*
* Function accepts the domain for
* which we want the WHOIS information
* default value is example.com
*/
function getWhoisText($domain = 'example.com') {
/*
* whois-servers.net provides
* information pertaining to relevant
* whois servers
*/
$WHOIS = 'whois-servers.net';

/*
* This code breaks a domain into it's
* atomic parts and reverses their order
*/
$tmp = array_reverse(explode('.', $domain));

/*
* Here we set the the appropriate WHOIS
* server based on the Top Level Domain
*/
$server = $tmp[0] . "." . $WHOIS;

/*
* Connect to the WHOIS server
*/
if(!$link = fsockopen($server, 43, $errno, $errstr, 15)) {
trigger_error("Error (" . $errno . "): " . $errstr .
"Could not connect to " . $server,
E_USER_ERROR);
return false;
}

/*
* write the domain to the socket
*/
if(!fwrite($link, $domain. "\r\n")){
trigger_error("Error: Could not write to socket",
E_USER_ERROR);
return false;
}

/*
* collect the returned data
*/
while (!feof($link)){
$string .= fgets($link, 4096);
}

/*
* close the socket
*/
fclose($link);

/*
* return whois information
*/
return $string;
}

Code:

/*
* Function accepts the IP for
* which we want the WHOIS information
*/
function getIpWhoisText($ip, $server = 'ARIN') {
/*
* Validate IP Address
*/
if(!ip2long($ip)) {
trigger_error("Invalid IP Address",
E_USER_NOTICE);
return false;
}
/*
* List of servers
*/
$SERVERS = array('ARIN' => 'whois.arin.net',
'RIPE' => 'whois.ripe.net',
'APNIC' => 'whois.apnic.net',
'LACNIC' => 'whois.lacnic.net',
'AfriNIC' => 'whois.afrinic.net' );
/*
* Check that the server exists in our array
*/
if(!array_key_exists($server, $SERVERS)) {
trigger_error("Invalid Server type, must be one of, " .
implode(", ", array_keys($SERVERS)) . ".",
E_USER_NOTICE);
return false;
}

/*
* Here we set the the appropriate WHOIS
* server
*/
$server = $SERVERS[$server];

/*
* Connect to the WHOIS server
*/
if(!$link = fsockopen($server, 43, $errno, $errstr, 15)) {
trigger_error("Error (" . $errno . "): " . $errstr .
"Could not connect to " . $server,
E_USER_NOTICE);
return false;
}

/*
* write the ip to the socket
*/
if(!fwrite($link, $ip. "\r\n")){
trigger_error("Error: Could not write to socket",
E_USER_NOTICE);
return false;
}

/*
* collect the returned data
*/
while (!feof($link)){
$string .= fgets($link, 4096);
}

/*
* close the socket
*/
fclose($link);

/*
* return whois information
*/
return $string;
}