Domain-cli: Search domain availability from terminal | Hacker News Reader

Domain-cli: Search domain availability from terminal

github.com

46 pointsgoldxfive38 comments

Reminds me of a similar tool I wrote some time ago that checks if a given name is taken, but on every top level domain:

Looks like it's a wrapper for the API on https://domainsdb.info/ which itself is based on either an API of https://domains-index.com/ or a paid subscription of the latter.

A text file with the TLDs, dig, and a one liner on the shell can produce the same result

I like instant Domain search a lot. Well built

https://instantdomainsearch.com/

Curious if anyone finds the boxes and colors in the output of CLI tools such as this one useful. If so, why?

It can be helpful in terminals that support it but it's easy to overdo.

Here, the box/table is literally separating two pieces of info (ordinance+domain) so there's no need to lose all that screen space. And the big logo is obviously unnecessary and probably reduces re-use - seems like I'm dialing into a Renegade BBS circa 1992.

I think there are UX benefits to introducing color and formatting when available, but it's best kept subtle.

I wrote something that goes through the dictionary checking domains a few years ago. https://github.com/foobarbecue/domainance

Really cool concept!

Unfortunately domainsdb doesn't know about 4 of 10 domains I own, so I'm afraid this service isn't too useful when precision is important (i.e. creating a service that searches for taken domains based on it)

Mind to share these 4 domains with me at webmaster@domains-index.com ?

GoDaddy has an availability API at developers.godaddy.com. Works pretty much like you'd expect...

Why not just...

    whois example.com

Or is this also intended to be a domain discovery tool?

In which case why not 'dig' or 'nslookup' too?

There is one odd case where asking DNS won't work accurately: if a domain is registered but has no nameservers.

Can you give some example? I have tried some registrars and if you don't provide some NS information, the default NS information is used.

I have a tool in the past https://gist.github.com/icy/b30893cecc8ec657317ba93831b0fd4a... it works fine as I experience. The tool has option `--all` to check by using both google/open dns. E.g,

  $ whoisvn google-is-good.com --all
      opendns.org:   google-is-good.com   available
        googledns:   google-is-good.com   available
  
  $ whoisvn google-is-bad.com --all
      opendns.org:    google-is-bad.com   available
        googledns:    google-is-bad.com   available

Look at, for example, "nmu360.se". It is registered, but has no name servers configured.

Whois says it has no name server (what a weird format that of .se), but digg finds an A record with 92.242.140.20 (what seems to be a register IP).

Let me guess: Your ISP is injecting fake DNS responses.

   echo nmu360.se|exec nc -vvn 91.226.37.83 43

Very good example. Thanks a lot.

Almost always, you need to provide nameservers when you register a domain. host -t NS example.org should return something, even if the listed nameservers don't exist, don't respond for that domain, or return NXDomain.

Isn't there always an SOA record?

No. If there are no name servers, there isn’t a zone, and if there isn’t a zone, there is no SOA record.

whois may not work if you don't have correct configuration (e.g, whois server for some special domains .info, .social, ...)

Use a proper whois command which has all this configured. Note: may be difficult to achieve on macOS.

It's even hard on Linux machine. How do you know all whois servers for different top level domains? for .info, for .social, for .in, bla bla. In 2016 it's so painful to set up correct whois monitoring at my company . (May be it's a lot better now.)

apt install whois

What's that banner at the start of the demo? That part as good.

CFonts according to the source code.

https://github.com/dominikwilkowski/cfonts

I don't get the demo - if I enter google.com, shouldn't it check for google.de instead of google.com.de?

Huh? Why would it check for something you didn't ask for?

Sorry but I refuse to use node based cli applications. Not trying to be overly negative, just frank.

what difference does it make? There are plenty of cli commands implemented in python/ruby/dtrace/shell and you're not aware of them. What's different about node aside from your negative bias?

There are no common tools in nodejs, no system ships with node. I only have node on my production servers, because Rails needs a JS engine and node is fast.

Actually i assume nearly every techie tries to avoid installing hundreds of different interpreters with even more dependencies just to run tiny scripts which could be replaced by a smart shell one liner.

Often techies sudo apt install packages and these packages might have a nodejs/python/ruby as a dependency.

Why python/ruby would be ok but nodejs is not?

Python ships with the system. I am not aware of common Ruby scripts. I am a Ruby dev so I use a exception on that.

I would immediately notice if I accidentally ran a Ruby or a Node.js script or a dtrace¹ script. That's because I don't have of these interpreters installed on my system.

¹ I have no idea what dtrace is.

How come? Just curious

Too many emojis, or I would use this.

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