WHOIS Lookup Data

[Unknown]

When someone queries a WHOIS server for a domain name, is the data sent back strictly text or is it organized into fields (eg Expiration Date, Namservers, REgistrar).

I'm trying to implement a script that queries a WHOIS server and reports back only the expiration date and registrar and was wondering if I had to use regex to clean out the text or if there is an easier method.

 

[Barrucadu]

It's just text. And what's more, the format it is sent in depends on the server.

 

[qbert220]

If you query the TLD whois server (with recursive lookup disabled), then you should get consistent results for any domain within that TLD. Each TLD (usually) has a separate whois server. This means they you may need a different regexp for each TLD that you want to support.

 

[user-7256]

You can probably write some sort of parser. I've been looking to write one actually. Maybe I will this month and I'll post it when I release it. I'm sick of seeing different formats of WHOIS text, but since generally the expiration date is preceeded by "Expire", etc, it shouldn't be terribly difficult.