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A way to check of a domain is listed on Afternic

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I'm curious if there is a programmatic way to see if a domain is listed on Afternic. I thought of scraping it right from Afternic.com/domain/domain.tld itself but that isn't so simple, turns out the domain availability is determined and outputted by JavaScript so the underlying HTML is the same whether the domain exists or not, its just script tags.

I was hoping to write a script to check if new domains i purchase are already listed or not and if so automatically send an email requesting their removal so I don't have to deal with doing so manually.
 
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Let me know if you figure it out. I'd buy it!
 
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To do this, I start bulk add (the form accepts up to 50 domains) after logging in to my afternic account. Without finishing the process, as I do not normally list recent purchases on afternic (60 days no transfer rule). It shows unavailable domains right on the first step. Unavailable = exists at some other afternic account. Yes, it is still manual. However, it also shows domains which are "hidden" at other accounts (not actively listed for sale, so those cannot be determined using other ways).

Edited: I do not think that this method can be scripted. There is some heavy java used, unavailable domains do not appear immediately. Only after some seconds and/or after scrolling up and down... at least for max. length lists of 50 domains :(
 
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@Ryan217 can i add my own wish?

Search mass-remove prev owner listing(s)

(Would re-list most, especially at afternic)

Samer
 
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Thanks to @tonyk2000 I was able to figure it out. I wrote a simple webservice to check Afternic, and Dan too.

Just point to https://isitlisted.net/check.php?domain=example.com

It will search the domain you provided and return json with 4 parts:

afternic_success: True or False, showing whether or not it was able to successfully check the status of the domain at Afternic.
afternic_listed: True or False, is the domain listed or not.

dan_success: True or False, showing whether or not it was able to successfully check the status of the domain at Dan.com
dan_listed: True or False, is the domain listed or not.

Feel free to use it all you want. It should be easy to write a script to take your domains run it though this, and if either listed value is true you can email the marketplace to request removal. If you have public WHOIS on the domain and send the email from the admin contact email they shouldn't require anything further to remove the listing. You could use SMTP or an email sending service to automate the emails even, which is what I intend to do myself.
 
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@Ryan217 - this is great! Unsure about Dan, but I would not be surprised to see Afternic changing something (I mean negatively) if they are "scripted" from outside, as the result of your service being public. Which may affect daily operations - yours, mine, etc. So, is it really necessary for the service to be publicly available? Maybe I'm paranoid, I know :)
 
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If you're a dev you could have found the JSON API link in the source code. It looks like

https://www.afternic.com/domains/api/listingDetails/robot.com

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with robot.com domain in any way, it just being used as an example.

Exactly what I ultimately discovered to accomplish this.

@Ryan217 - this is great! Unsure about Dan, but I would not be surprised to see Afternic changing something (I mean negatively) if they are "scripted" from outside, as the result of your service being public. Which may affect daily operations - yours, mine, etc. So, is it really necessary for the service to be publicly available? Maybe I'm paranoid, I know :)

Ya I'm not too sure. Technically the script would have a much lower load on their servers than someone manually accessing the website to check (this doesn't load HTML, CSS, Javascript, Images, ect) so they shouldn't mind. I could add in some rate limiting based on IP to further reduce the load if it became too problematic. I suspect this is how dofo knows if it is for sale on Afternic and they haven't been frozen out of the data yet, and I am certain they make a lot more queries than this probably will. That said if they, or Dan, ask me to stop doing this I will happily comply, I am not trying to rock the boat or anything just provide a useful service to others.
 
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...I suspect this is how dofo knows if it is for sale on Afternic and they haven't been frozen out of the data yet, and I am certain they make a lot more queries than this probably will...

Nope. We have a partnership with all marketplaces. We do not scrape. We directly access the data.
 
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Let me know if you figure it out.
 
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