[anti-abuse-wg] Looking for advice on WhoIs server query format

In article <3f032924-7298-9034-a22f-6264ed6c3aa6 at telus.net> you write:
>Over the past few days I have come to realize the not all of the TLD 
>WhoIs servers seems to use or support a common query format and I was 
>hoping someone on this list might be able to point me to forum or web 
>page where I can find more information on this subject.

No kidding.  Most of the ICANN contracted gTLDs use the same format,
defined in Specification 4 of the standard registry agreement.

https://newgtlds.icann.org/sites/default/files/agreements/agreement-approved-31jul17-en.html#specification4

Except that .COM and .NET are "thin" registries that only have a small
part of the data, with the rest at each registrar.  The registrar
whois is utterly random.  Most country ccTLDs don't have any useful
whois, and again the ones that do have wildly different formats.

I have a 3500 line perl module that tries to scrape whois with limited
success, particularly since most registrars now redact nearly
everything with GDPR as the excuse.

There's a new RFC defined scheme called RDAP that uses http queries
and JSON responses that is nearly trivial to parse.  All the ICANN
contracted registries and registrars are supposed to switch to RDAP at
some point but I'm not holding my breath.

>For instance I have found the whois.arin.net ...

The RIRs are different.  They actually do have RDAP servers that work
pretty well.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly