Because it is all knowing! A WHOIS retrieval and parsing library for Python, forked from pythonwhois and updated by me.

None! All you need is the Python standard library.

The manual (including install instructions) can be found in the doc/ directory. A HTML version is also viewable here.

Using pythonwhois.set_persistent_cache a cache can be set. If a cache is set, whois-oracle will look there for WHOIS servers for TLD's. For domains with thin WHOIS servers, only the 'head' WHOIS server is cached, not the referral servers. Otherwise it would be impossible to get the correct information because the information for the domain might not be on that WHOIS server at all.

This feature is not useful for single lookups, but for bulk this comes in really handy. Every WHOIS server gets a certain time before it will be asked again, to prevent spamming and possibly refused connections. This can be configured by passing a configuration file to pythonwhois.set_cool_down_config. This file can contain the following to elements, but doesn't have to. [general]
default_cool_down_length : 1
This is the general part. Currently, only one variable can be defined. It is optional to do so.

[whois.eu]
cool_down_length : 10
max_requests_minute : 5
max_requests_hour : 20
max_requests_day : 50
This is how sections for specific WHOIS servers are defined. The section name is the name of the server and the section can contain the listed properties. None of them are required. Multiple WHOIS servers can be added to the configuration file.

• 100% coverage of WHOIS formats.
• Accurate and complete data.
• Consistently functional parsing; constant tests to ensure the parser isn't accidentally broken.

• WHOIS data retrieval
  • Able to follow WHOIS server redirects
  • Won't get stuck on multiple-result responses from verisign-grs
• WHOIS data parsing
  • Base information (registrar, etc.)
  • Dates/times (registration, expiry, ...)
  • Full registrant information (!)
  • Nameservers
• Optional WHOIS data normalization
  • Attempts to intelligently reformat WHOIS data for better accuracy and (human) readability
  • Converts various abbreviation types to full locality names
    • Airport codes
    • Country names (2- and 3-letter ISO codes)
    • US states and territories
    • Canadian states and territories
    • Australian states
  • Identifies both organization and person names, and moves or reformats them where necessary
  • Identifies names where the first and last name are swapped around, and fixes them
  • Deduplicates names, even across fields, and even when they're not 100% identical
  • Recognizes common (legal) abbreviations, and ensures that they are in the correct case
• pwhois, a simple WHOIS tool using pythonwhois
  • Easily readable output format
  • Can also output raw WHOIS data
  • ... and JSON.
• Automated testing suite
  • Will detect and warn about any changes in parsed data compared to previous runs
  • Guarantees that previously working WHOIS parsing doesn't unintentionally break when changing code

pythonwhois does not yet support WHOIS lookups on IP ranges (including single IPs), although this will be added at some point in the future. In the meantime, consider using ipwhois - it offers functionality and an API similar to pythonwhois, but for IPs. It also supports delegated RWhois.

Do note that ipwhois does not offer a normalization feature, and does not (yet) come with a command-line tool. Additionally, ipwhois is maintained by Philip Hane and not by me; please make sure to file bugs relating to it in the ipwhois repository, not in that of pythonwhois.

• It doesn't work at all?
• It doesn't parse the data for a particular domain?
• There's an inaccuracy in parsing the data for a domain, even just a small one?

If any of those apply, don't hesitate to file an issue! The goal is 100% coverage, and we need your feedback to reach that goal.

This library may be used under the WTFPL - or, if you take issue with that, consider it to be under the CC0.

This library uses a number of third-party datasets for normalization:

• airports.dat: OpenFlights Airports Database (Open Database License 1.0, Database Contents License 1.0)
• countries.dat: Country List (MIT license)
• countries3.dat: ISO countries list (license unspecified)
• states_au.dat: Part of pythonwhois (WTFPL/CC0)
• states_us.dat: State Table (license unspecified, free reuse encouraged)
• states_ca.dat: State Table (license unspecified, free reuse encouraged)
• common_first_names.dat: Social Security Administration, via hadley/data-baby-names (license unspecified, provided by US government)

Be aware that the OpenFlights database in particular has potential licensing consequences; if you do not wish to be bound by these potential consequences, you may simply delete the airports.dat file from your distribution. pythonwhois will assume there is no database available, and will not perform airport code conversion (but still function correctly otherwise). This also applies to other included datasets.

Feel free to fork and submit pull requests (to the develop branch)! If you change any parsing or normalization logic, ensure to run the full test suite before opening a pull request. Instructions for that are below.

Please note that this project uses tabs for indentation.

All commands are relative to the root directory of the repository.

Pull requests that do not include output from test.py will be rejected!

pwhois --raw thedomain.com > test/data/thedomain.com

./pwhois -f test/data/thedomain.com/ .

(don't forget the dot at the end!)

Make sure to verify (using pwhois or otherwise) that the WHOIS data for the domain is being parsed correctly, before marking it as correct!

./test.py update thedomain.com

./test.py run all

./test.py run thedomain.com

tox

You need ZippyDoc (which can be installed through pip install zippydoc).

zpy2html doc/*.zpy