NAME¶
Net::XWhois - Whois Client Interface for Perl5.
SYNOPSIS¶
use Net::XWhois;
$whois = new Net::XWhois Domain => "vipul.net" ;
$whois = new Net::XWhois Domain => "bit.ch",
Server => "domreg.nic.ch",
Retain => 1,
Parser => {
nameservers => 'nserver:\s+(\S+)',
};
DESCRIPTION¶
The Net::XWhois class provides a generic client framework for doing Whois
queries and parsing server response.
The class maintains an array of top level domains and whois servers associated
with them. This allows the class to transparently serve requests for different
tlds, selecting servers appropriate for the tld. The server details are,
therefore, hidden from the user and "vipul.net" (from InterNIC),
gov.ru (from RIPE) and "bit.ch" (from domreg.nic.ch) are queried in
the same manner. This behaviour can be overridden by specifying different
bindings at object construction or by registering associations with the class.
See "
register_associations()" and "
new()".
One of the more important goals of this module is to enable the design of
consistent and predictable interfaces to incompatible whois response formats.
The Whois RFC (954) does not define a template for presenting server data;
consequently there is a large variation in layout styles as well as content
served across servers.
(There is, however, a new standard called RPSL (RFC2622) used by RIPE
(
http://www.ripe.net), the European main whois server.)
To overcome this, Net::XWhois maintains another set of tables - parsing rulesets
- for a few, popular response formats. (See "%PARSERS"). These
parsing tables contain section names (labels) together with regular
expressions that
match the corresponding section text. The section text
is accessed "via" labels which are available as data instance
methods at runtime. By following a consistent nomenclature for labels,
semantically related information encoded in different formats can be accessed
with the same methods.
CONSTRUCTOR¶
- new ()
- Creates a Net::XWhois object. Takes an optional argument, a
hash, that specifies the domain name to be queried. Calls lookup()
if a name is provided. The argument hash can also specify a whois server,
a parsing rule-set or a parsing rule-set format. (See "
personality()"). Omitting the argument will create an
"empty" object that can be used for accessing class data.
- personality ()
- Alters an object's personality. Takes a hash with following
arguments. (Note: These arguments can also be passed to the
constructor).
- Domain
- Domain name to be queried.
- Server
- Server to query.
- Parser
- Parsing Rule-set. See "%PARSERS".
Parser => {
name => 'domain:\s+(\S+)\n',
nameservers => 'nserver:\s+(\S+)',
contact_emails => 'e-mail:\s+(\S+\@\S+)',
};
- Format
- A pre-defined parser format like INTERNIC, INTERNIC_FORMAT,
RIPE, RIPE_CH, JAPAN etc.
Format => 'INTERNIC_CONTACT',
- Nocache
- Force XWhois to ignore the cached records.
- Error
- Determines how a network connection error is handled. By
default Net::XWhois will croak() if it can't connect to the whois
server. The Error attribute specifies a function call name that will be
invoked when a network connection error occurs. Possible values are croak,
carp, confess (imported from Carp.pm) and ignore (a blank function
provided by Net::XWhois). You can, of course, write your own function to
do error handling, in which case you'd have to provide a fully qualified
function name. Example: main::logerr.
- Timeout
- Timeout value for establishing a network connection with
the server. The default value is 60 seconds.
CLASS DATA & ACCESS METHODS¶
- %PARSERS
- An associative array that contains parsing rule-sets for
various response formats. Keys of this array are format names and values
are hash refs that contain section labels and corresponding parser code.
The parser code can either be a regex or a reference to a subroutine. In
the case of a subroutine, the whois 'response' information is available to
the sub in $_[0]. Parsers can be added and extended with the
register_parser() method. Also see "Data Instance
Methods".
my %PARSERS = (
INTERNIC => {
contact_tech => 'Technical Contact.*?\n(.*?)(?=\...
contact_zone => 'Zone Contact.*?\n(.*?)(?=\s*\n[...
contact_billing => 'Billing Contact.*?\n(.*?)(?=\s*...
contact_emails => \&example_email_parser
},
{ etc. ... },
);
sub example_email_parser {
# Note that the default internal implemenation for
# the INTERNIC parser is not a user-supplied code
# block. This is just an instructive example.
my @matches = $_[0] =~ /(\S+\@\S+)/sg;
return @matches;
}
See XWhois.pm for the complete definition of %PARSERS.
- %WHOIS_PARSER
- %WHOIS_PARSER is a table that associates each whois server
with their output format.
my %WHOIS_PARSER = (
'whois.ripe.net' => 'RPSL',
'whois.nic.mil' => 'INTERNIC',
'whois.nic.ad.jp' => 'JAPAN',
'whois.domainz.net.nz' => 'GENERIC',
'whois.nic.gov' => 'INTERNIC',
'whois.nic.ch' => 'RIPE_CH',
'whois.twnic.net' => 'TAIWAN',
'whois.internic.net' => 'INTERNIC',
'whois.nic.net.sg' => 'RIPE',
'whois.aunic.net' => 'RIPE',
'whois.cdnnet.ca' => 'CANADA',
'whois.nic.uk' => 'INTERNIC',
'whois.krnic.net' => 'KOREA',
'whois.isi.edu' => 'INTERNIC',
'whois.norid.no' => 'RPSL',
( etc.....)
Please note that there is a plethora of output formats, allthough there are
RFCs on this issue, like for instance RFC2622, there are numerous
different formats being used!
- %DOMAIN_ASSOC
- %DOMAIN_ASSOC is a table that associates top level domain
names with their respective whois servers. You'd need to modity this table
if you wish to extend the module's functionality to handle a new set of
domain names. Or alter existing information.
register_association() provides an interface to this
array. See XWhois.pm for the complete definition.
my %DOMAIN_ASSOC = (
'al' => 'whois.ripe.net',
'am' => 'whois.ripe.net',
'at' => 'whois.ripe.net',
'au' => 'whois.aunic.net',
'az' => 'whois.ripe.net',
'ba' => 'whois.ripe.net',
'be' => 'whois.ripe.net',
- register_parser()
- Extend, modify and override entries in %PARSERS. Accepts a
hash with three keys - Name, Retain and Parser. If the format definition
for the specified format exists and the Retain key holds a true value, the
keys from the specified Parser are added to the existing definition. A new
definition is created when Retain is false/not specified.
my $w = new Net::Whois;
$w->register_parser (
Name => "INTERNIC",
Retain => 1,
Parser => {
creation_time => 'created on (\S*?)\.\n',
some_randome_entity => \&random_entity_subroutine
};
Instructions on how to create a workable random_entity_subroutine are
availabe in the %PARSERS description, above.
- register_association()
- Override and add entries to %ASSOC. Accepts a hash that
contains representation specs for a whois server. The keys of this hash
are server machine names and values are list-refs to the associated
response formats and the top-level domains handled by the servers. See
Net/XWhois.pm for more details.
my $w = new Net::XWhois;
$w->register_association (
'whois.aunic.net' => [ RIPE, [ qw/au/ ] ]
);
- register_cache()
- By default, Net::XWhois caches all whois responses and
commits them, as separate files, to /tmp/whois. register_cache () gets and
sets the cache directory. Setting to "undef" will disable
caching.
$w->register_cache ( "/some/place/else" );
$w->register_cache ( undef );
OBJECT METHODS¶
- Data Instance Methods
- Access to the whois response data is provided via
AUTOLOADED methods specified in the Parser. The methods return scalar or
list data depending on the context.
Internic Parser provides the following methods:
- name()
- Domain name.
- status()
- Domain Status when provided. When the domain is on hold,
this method will return "On Hold" string.
- nameservers()
- Nameservers along with their IPs.
- registrant
- Registrant's name and address.
- contact_admin()
- Administrative Contact.
- contact_tech()
- Technical Contact.
- contact_zone()
- Zone Contact.
- contact_billing()
- Billing Contact.
- contact_emails()
- List of email addresses of contacts.
- contact_handles()
- List of contact handles in the response. Contact and Domain
handles are valid query data that can be used instead of contact and
domain names.
- domain_handles()
- List of domain handles in the response. Can be used for
sorting out reponses that contain multiple domain names.
- lookup()
- Does a whois lookup on the specified domain. Takes the same
arguments as new().
my $w = new Net::XWhois;
$w->lookup ( Domain => "perl.com" );
print $w->response ();
EXAMPLES¶
Look at example programs that come with this package. "whois" is a
replacement for the standard RIPE/InterNIC whois client. "creation"
overrides the Parser value at object init and gets the Creation Time of an
InterNIC domain. "creation2" does the same thing by extending the
Class Parser. "contacts" queries and prints information about
domain's Tech/Billing/Admin contacts.
contribs/ containts parsers for serveral whois servers, which have not been
patched into the module.
AUTHOR¶
Vipul Ved Prakash <mail@vipul.net>
THANKS¶
Curt Powell <curt.powell@sierraridge.com>, Matt Spiers
<matt@pavilion.net>, Richard Dice <rdice@pobox.com>, Robert
Chalmers <robert@chalmers.com.au>, Steinar Overbeck Cook
<steinar@balder.no>, Steve Weathers <steve@domainit.com>, Robert
Puettmann <rpuettmann@ipm.net>, Martin H . Sluka"
<martin@sluka.de>, Rob Woodard <rwoodard15@attbi.com>, Jon
Gilbert, Erik Aronesty for patches, bug-reports and many cogent suggestions.
MAILING LIST¶
Net::XWhois development has moved to the sourceforge mailing list,
xwhois-devel@lists.sourceforge.net. Please send all Net::XWhois related
communication directly to the list address. The subscription interface is at:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/xwhois-devel
SEE ALSO¶
RFC 954 <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc954.html>
RFC 2622 <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2622.html>
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright (c) 1998-2001 Vipul Ved Prakash. All rights reserved. This program is
free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms
as Perl itself.