Is there a public web service for querying domain names?

Is 开发者_运维问答there a public web service for querying domain names?

Like I would want to know if mediumhighlow.com is unused and free to register. I mean I know that I can go to a domain seller like GoDaddy and type in the query manually, but I want to be able to automate this process and do checks for a list of domain names (well if I do it manually that's really gonna take a loooong time)

So well, back to the question, Is there a public web service for querying domain names??

Yes there is.

This seems like a comprehensive API, but it's not clear how to register with them: http://www.domainapi.com/documentation/documentation/service-details/domain-availability-api.html

I also found this, which seems to be less awesome because you just get an unparsed whois dump, but it is at least free: POST to http://www.webservicex.net/whois.asmx/GetWhoIS Include the parameter "HostName" in your request, with the value e.g. stackoverflow.com You get back a big chunk of text wrapped in a simple XML tag. Now you've just gotta figure out how to parse it...

I found a couple of others, but they all charge a fee:

• http://www.domaintools.com/api/docs
• http://www.domainsearchguru.com/index.php/site/domain_search_api (first 100 lookups free)

There are also some alernatives listed here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3463336/recommended-apis-for-checking-domain-availability