Querying the database

Clearly it's useful and important to be able to query the AdamsNames database. Besides the usual website interface which is designed for human interaction, a number of other APIs exist.

HTTP

Perhaps the most common query tests the registration of a domain. We have provided a simple HTTP interface for such queries which returns a simple output designed to be easily parsed by machine. The three boxes below illustrate the normal responses of the program; clinking on the links actually performs a query on the live database.

Online Help: http://www.adamsnames.com/whois/reg.cgi
To see if a domain wibble.tc is registered use http://www.adamsnames.com/whois/reg.cgi?query=wibble.tc Three responses are possible: `no' ; domain is free `yes' ; domain is registered `error n' ; error n occurred To test multiple domains, use instead the mquery argument: http://www.adamsnames.com/whois/reg.cgi?mquery=wibble.tc,wibble.vg,foo.ms,bar.gd Results are returned one per line in the format domain_name:status where status is one of the three responses shown above. For example: wibble.tc: no wibble.vg: no foo.ms: yes bar.gd: no
A registered domain: http://www.adamsnames.com/whois/reg.cgi?query=adamsnames.tc
yes
An unregistered domain: http://www.adamsnames.com/whois/reg.cgi?query=xfsjhf.tc
no
Multiple queries at once: http://www.adamsnames.com/whois/reg.cgi?mquery=wibble.tc,wibble.vg,foo.ms,bar.gd
wibble.tc: no wibble.vg: no foo.ms: yes bar.gd: no

As the help suggests, in exceptional circumstances, it is possible to generate an error response. Usually this will imply a malformed URL, or perhaps an error at our site. If you do get this response, and don't know why, please contact us.

whois

The whois route is scarcely harder. For human use you can talk to our server whois.adamsnames.com with the normal Unix command line whois program. If you're performing the query to see if a domain exists, then please use the testdomain keyword:

% whois -h whois.adamsnames.com testdomain nike.tc
Yes
nike.tc is registered.
  

% whois -h whois.adamsnames.com testdomain nike.tc:ekin.tc
Yes
nike.tc is registered.
No
ekin.tc is not registered.
  

Please note that the AdamsNames whois server only presently returns a simple domain existence test, and does not return actual whois information.

From within a script you might prefer to connect to socket 43 directly and send your query. If you'd like more help with this then please contact us.

XML-RPC

AdamsNames has implemented a low-level XMLRPC API which allows authorized users to register, alter, and query objects in our registry. Please see the its documentation, or contact us.

RRP

For the special case of domains which are registered such that the same contact assumes all responsibility for the domain i.e. all the contacts are the same, AdamsNames offers a rrp server broadly compatible with RFC-2159.

Access to this server is strictly controlled, so if you are interested in using it then please contact us. We are also most interested to work with people who would like to generalize the protocol to the case where different responsibilities are assumed by different contacts.