Form Processing

[knight]

Alright I've designed a form that post information for wwwhois lookup. I have 6 nameservers listed with radio buttons in the group value of nameserver and individual values as the path of the name server example of one I have:

<input type="radio" value="whois.nic.gov" name="nameserver">

Now I have function for the wwwhois here:

function wwwhois($target){
$server = $namesever;
message("<p><b>WWWhois Results:</b><blockquote>");
$target = gethostbyaddr($target);
if (! eregi("[a-zA-Z]", $target))
$msg .= "Can't WWWhois without a domain name.";
else if (!eregi(".com|.net|.org|.edu|.ca|.uk|.co.uk|.au|.de", $target))
$msg .= "I currently only support .com, .net, .org, .edu, .uk, .co.uk, .au, and .de";
else{
message("Connecting to $server...<br><br>");
if (! $sock = fsockopen($server, 43, &$num, &$error, 10)){
unset($sock);
$msg .= "Timed-out connecting to $server (port 43)";
}
else{
fputs($sock, "$target\n");
while (!feof($sock))
$buffer .= fgets($sock, 10240);
}
fclose($sock);
if(! eregi("Whois Server:", $buffer)){
if(eregi("no match", $buffer))
message("NOT FOUND: No match for $target<br>");
else
message("Ambiguous query, multiple matches for $target:<br>");
}
else{
$buffer = split("\n", $buffer);
for ($i=0; $i<sizeof($buffer); $i++){
if (eregi("Whois Server:", $buffer[$i]))
$buffer = $buffer[$i];
}
$nextServer = substr($buffer, 17, (strlen($buffer)-17));
$buffer = "";
message("Deferred to specific whois server: $nextServer...<br><br>");
if(! $sock = fsockopen($nextServer, 43, &$num, &$error, 10)){
unset($sock);
$msg .= "Timed-out connecting to $nextServer (port 43)";
}
else{
fputs($sock, "$target\n");
while (!feof($sock))
$buffer .= fgets($sock, 10240);
fclose($sock);
}
}
$msg .= nl2br($buffer);
}
$msg .= "</blockquote></p>";
message($msg);
}

now $server = $nameserver; use to be $server = "rs.internic.net";

When I tried to execute this on my site for testing I got a sparse error like this:

Warning: Unable to find file identifier 0 in /home/knight/scriptparadise-www/hvnqt/indextest.php3 on line 184
Ambiguous query, multiple matches for dvnull.org:

What have I done wrong?

[kparker]

What have I done wrong?

I'm not completely sure--since this appears to be an excerpt from a longer php script, I can't be sure I'm correlating "line 184" to the correct place in the function. Can you please identify exactly which statement this refers to?

But while I'm waiting, here's a few comments about other stuff I saw:

if (! eregi("[a-zA-Z]", $target))
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$msg .= "Can't WWWhois without a domain name.";

This test is far less valuable than it claims to be--while it does indeed catch some names that are not valid, there are many others that it won't. Indeed, any string with at least one alpha char will pass this test, for example:

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;test
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;test.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;test.TooLongToBeAnActualTopLevelDomain

etc.

In addition, since you're already calling eregI, you don't need to include both upper and lower cases in your regex. Here's one more-accurate version:

if ( ! eregi( ".[a-z]{2,3}$", $target))

This only matches if the tail of the string contains a dot followed by exactly two or three alpha characters. You will need to change the 3} once the new TLDs come into actual use.

(!eregi(".com|.net|.org|.edu|.ca|.uk|.co.uk|.au|.de",

Here again you forgot to anchor the regex to the end of the string, so targets such as 'test.demo.mordred.za' will pass when they shouldn't. Another (perhaps minor) point is that anything that matches .co.uk will match .uk, so you don't need the former at all.

[knight]

This is what line 184 is:

if(eregi("no match", $buffer))

[kparker]

Ah! That can't be the actual line (since that statement only references $buffer, and ereg... doesn't care about file handles) but you got me close to what might actually be a problem. Consider (with indentation added):

if (! $sock = fsockopen($server, 43, &$num, &$error, 10))
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;{
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;unset($sock);
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$msg .= "Timed-out connecting to $server (port 43)";
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}
else
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;{
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;fputs($sock, "$target\n");
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;while (!feof($sock))
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$buffer .= fgets($sock, 10240);
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;}
fclose($sock);

Here, you're calling fclose($sock) even if the fsockopen() timed out, in which case you've already unset $sock. You should move the call to fclose() to the bottom of the else-body.

[knight]

That's exactly what was wrong, thx!