Customize whois Output and Handle Exceptions
In this step, you will learn how to customize the output of the whois command and handle exceptions that may occur.
First, let's try customizing the output of the whois command. You can use the -h or --host option to specify the WHOIS server to use for the lookup. For example, to use the WHOIS server for the .com top-level domain, you can run:
whois -h whois.verisign-grs.com example.com
This will display the WHOIS information for the example.com domain using the Verisign WHOIS server.
You can also use the -r or --raw option to display the raw WHOIS response without any formatting:
whois -r example.com
Example output:
Domain Name: EXAMPLE.COM
Registry Domain ID: 2336799_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.example.com
Registrar URL: http://www.example.com
Updated Date: 2023-04-01T12:00:00Z
Creation Date: 1995-08-14T04:00:00Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2024-08-14T04:00:00Z
Registrant Organization: Example Corporation
Registrant State/Province: California
Registrant Country: US
Now, let's try handling exceptions that may occur when using the whois command. If a domain does not exist or the WHOIS server is unavailable, the whois command will return an error message. For example, let's try looking up a non-existent domain:
whois non-existent-domain.com
Example output:
No match for "non-existent-domain.com".
To handle these exceptions, you can use a combination of the whois command and shell scripting. For example, you can check the exit code of the whois command to determine if the lookup was successful:
whois example.com
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
echo "WHOIS lookup successful"
else
echo "WHOIS lookup failed"
fi
By using these techniques, you can customize the whois command output and handle exceptions that may occur during the lookup process.
