WHOIS information

[Roel]

Hi all,

I want to query WHOIS info from my ASP.NET app.

I'd like to query a specific domain (e.g. google.com) and for availability
(e.g. google.eu (available/taken), google.nl (available/taken)).

Anyone knows a (commercial) component that gets this job done?

Kind Regards,
Roel

 

[William LaMartin]

I dabbled with this in the past. Here is a link to a class that will do
what you want

http://www.activevb.de/rubriken/vbdotnettipps/tipp0038.html

There is one problem, though, your web host has to allow you to create
sockets. So this worked fine on my development computer, but no hosting
company that I deal with will allow the creation of sockets.

 

[Mark Rae]

I want to query WHOIS info from my ASP.NET app.

I'd like to query a specific domain (e.g. google.com) and for availability
(e.g. google.eu (available/taken), google.nl (available/taken)).

You mean like this...?
http://www.markrae.com/hosting/domains.aspx

Anyone knows a (commercial) component that gets this job done?

There are loads of code samples on the net for this...

 

[Roel]

Hi Mark,

This is exactly what I mean!
I've searched for code samples on the net for this and there are many
indeed... but I can't get only one of them to work properly. Could you point
out some good examples? Thanx.

Roel

 

[Mark Rae]

This is exactly what I mean!
I've searched for code samples on the net for this and there are many
indeed... but I can't get only one of them to work properly. Could you
point out some good examples? Thanx.

You can use mine if you like:

using System.Net.Sockets;

string strDomain = String.Empty;
string strWhoIs = String.Empty;
string strResponse = String.Empty;

using (TcpClient objTcpClient = new TcpClient())
{
objTcpClient.Connect(strWhoIs, 43);
byte[] arrDomain = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(mstrDomain);
Stream objStream = objTcpClient.GetStream();
objStream.Write(arrDomain, 0, mstrDomain.Length);
StreamReader objSr = new StreamReader(objTcpClient.GetStream(),
Encoding.ASCII);
strResponse = objSr.ReadToEnd();
}

Then just interrogate the value of strResponse for the existence of either
the string "no match" or "not found" - if either of those strings exists in
strResponse, you haven't got a match, otherwise you have.

The value of strWhoIs will depend on the domain's suffix - I use the
following List<>:

com: whois.crsnic.net
net: whois.crsnic.net
org: whois.crsnic.net
edu: whois.crsnic.net
biz: whois.neulevel.biz
info: whois.afilias.info
name: whois.nic.name

For the country-specific domains (e.g. .co.uk, .co.ca, .co.de etc) you
prefix the country code with "whois.nic." I.e. for a UK domain, you would
use whois.nic.uk and for a Canadian domain you would use whois.nic.ca etc...

Also, if the domain is a .com or a .net, you should put the string "domain "
in front of it, otherwise you'll get all the nameservers too...

Incidentally, whereas this code *does* work, it's quite old now, and
searches on .biz domains always seem to time out... If anyone has any better
code for this, I'd be grateful to see it.

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

Hi, Mark.

Here's what I wrote, which works well:

void EnterBtn_Click(Object Src, EventArgs E)
{
String DomainName = Message.Text ;
String server = servers.SelectedItem.Text ;
TcpClient tcpc = new TcpClient(server, 43);
NetworkStream stream = tcpc.GetStream();
StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(stream);
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream);
writer.AutoFlush = true;
writer.WriteLine(DomainName);
String line;
while ((line=reader.ReadLine())!=null)
Response.Write(line + "<br>");
tcpc.Close();
}

Test it and see if it works any better (post back the results if you do).

re:

searches on .biz domains always seem to time out

I use whois.nic.biz ( which I think is an alias for whois.neulevel.biz )
and seldom get timeouts.

This is exactly what I mean!
I've searched for code samples on the net for this and there are many indeed... but I can't get
only one of them to work properly. Could you point out some good examples? Thanx.

You can use mine if you like:

using System.Net.Sockets;

string strDomain = String.Empty;
string strWhoIs = String.Empty;
string strResponse = String.Empty;

using (TcpClient objTcpClient = new TcpClient())
{
objTcpClient.Connect(strWhoIs, 43);
byte[] arrDomain = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(mstrDomain);
Stream objStream = objTcpClient.GetStream();
objStream.Write(arrDomain, 0, mstrDomain.Length);
StreamReader objSr = new StreamReader(objTcpClient.GetStream(), Encoding.ASCII);
strResponse = objSr.ReadToEnd();
}

Then just interrogate the value of strResponse for the existence of either the string "no match"
or "not found" - if either of those strings exists in strResponse, you haven't got a match,
otherwise you have.

The value of strWhoIs will depend on the domain's suffix - I use the following List<>:

com: whois.crsnic.net
net: whois.crsnic.net
org: whois.crsnic.net
edu: whois.crsnic.net
biz: whois.neulevel.biz
info: whois.afilias.info
name: whois.nic.name

For the country-specific domains (e.g. .co.uk, .co.ca, .co.de etc) you prefix the country code
with "whois.nic." I.e. for a UK domain, you would use whois.nic.uk and for a Canadian domain you
would use whois.nic.ca etc...

Also, if the domain is a .com or a .net, you should put the string "domain " in front of it,
otherwise you'll get all the nameservers too...

Incidentally, whereas this code *does* work, it's quite old now, and searches on .biz domains
always seem to time out... If anyone has any better code for this, I'd be grateful to see it.

 

[Mark Rae]

Here's what I wrote, which works well:

<snip>

Looks good.

Test it and see if it works any better (post back the results if you do).

I will do so this evening...

I use whois.nic.biz ( which I think is an alias for whois.neulevel.biz )
and seldom get timeouts.

Thanks - I'll modify my List<> accordingly.

 

[Roel]

Hello Mark,

Your example was very useful to me. Many thanks!

Kind Regards,
Roel

This is exactly what I mean!
I've searched for code samples on the net for this and there are many
indeed... but I can't get only one of them to work properly. Could you
point out some good examples? Thanx.

You can use mine if you like:

using System.Net.Sockets;

string strDomain = String.Empty;
string strWhoIs = String.Empty;
string strResponse = String.Empty;

using (TcpClient objTcpClient = new TcpClient())
{
objTcpClient.Connect(strWhoIs, 43);
byte[] arrDomain = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(mstrDomain);
Stream objStream = objTcpClient.GetStream();
objStream.Write(arrDomain, 0, mstrDomain.Length);
StreamReader objSr = new StreamReader(objTcpClient.GetStream(),
Encoding.ASCII);
strResponse = objSr.ReadToEnd();
}

Then just interrogate the value of strResponse for the existence of either
the string "no match" or "not found" - if either of those strings exists
in strResponse, you haven't got a match, otherwise you have.

The value of strWhoIs will depend on the domain's suffix - I use the
following List<>:

com: whois.crsnic.net
net: whois.crsnic.net
org: whois.crsnic.net
edu: whois.crsnic.net
biz: whois.neulevel.biz
info: whois.afilias.info
name: whois.nic.name

For the country-specific domains (e.g. .co.uk, .co.ca, .co.de etc) you
prefix the country code with "whois.nic." I.e. for a UK domain, you would
use whois.nic.uk and for a Canadian domain you would use whois.nic.ca
etc...

Also, if the domain is a .com or a .net, you should put the string "domain
" in front of it, otherwise you'll get all the nameservers too...

Incidentally, whereas this code *does* work, it's quite old now, and
searches on .biz domains always seem to time out... If anyone has any
better code for this, I'd be grateful to see it.

 

[Mark Rae]

Your example was very useful to me. Many thanks!

Welcome, but see also Juan's alternative code...

 

[Mark Rae]

Test it and see if it works any better (post back the results if you do).

At first, your code was a little quicker, but after I modified my code to
read:

NetworkStream objStream = objTcpClient.GetStream();

instead of

Stream objStream = objTcpClient.GetStream();

there was no appreciable difference... It now returns the 16 domain suffixes
in between one and two seconds, which is good enough for me...

I use whois.nic.biz ( which I think is an alias for whois.neulevel.biz )
and seldom get timeouts.

Yep - that's fixed the timeouts - thanks.

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

Good news...on both counts!

NetworkStream is a bit more efficient. Don't ask me why.
All I know is that it was suggested to me by someone who knows a lot!

Thanks for posting the results.