jon@jonroig.com said:
> Hey folks...
>
> My current employer has got a few hundred websites that we want to do a
> whois lookup for? Obviously, we don't wanna end up on anyone's whois
> blacklist by querying too quickly... so does anyone know of a a good
> industrial strength whois lookup? If I had my druthers, we'd find one that
> can return results in consistent XML files...

I wouldn't call this "Industrial strength" but it will basically do what
you want.  Save your domains in a file called "domains.txt" and change the
delay to whatever you feel is appropriate (currently set to query every 10
seconds).  You'll also need the LWP::RobotUA module if you don't have it
already installed.


#!/usr/bin/perl

use LWP::RobotUA;

open DOMAINS, "domains.txt";
chomp(@domains = <DOMAINS>);
close DOMAINS;
open RESULTS, ">whois_results.txt";

$baseurl = "http://www-whois.internic.net/cgi/whois?";

$browser = LWP::RobotUA->new('Whois Bot','your@email.here');
$browser->delay(10/60);

foreach $domain (@domains) {
   $url = $baseurl . "whois_nic=$domain&type=domain";
   $response = $browser->get($url);
   $_ = $response->content();
   ($results) = /<pre>(.*?)<\/pre>/s;
   $results =~ s/>>>.*//s;
   $results =~ s/.*Whois Server Version.*?Domain Name:/Domain Name:/s;
   print RESULTS $results;
}