phpMan > perldoc > Net::XWhois

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 AT vipul.net>

THANKS
    Curt Powell <curt.powell AT sierraridge.com>, Matt Spiers <matt AT pavilion.net>, Richard Dice
    <rdice AT pobox.com>, Robert Chalmers <robert AT chalmers.au>, Steinar Overbeck Cook
    <steinar AT balder.no>, Steve Weathers <steve AT domainit.com>, Robert Puettmann <rpuettmann AT ipm.net>,
    Martin H . Sluka" <martin AT sluka.de>, Rob Woodard <rwoodard15 AT 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 AT lists.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.