how to check if DOMAIN is REGISTERED?

[notset]

Hello,

what is the simple and fastest way to check if domain is registered? I don't need any information about it (whois or etc.). Just return "yes" or "not".

Thanks

[laserlight]

You have to do a whois check. There is no other way, unless you want to assume that a domain name for which no server (that is online and accessible) is associated with is not registered.

[notset]

ok, then how to do a whois check? what PHP function i need to use?

[MarkR]

There is no PHP function you can use. If the "whois" program is installed, you could run that using popen() and read the results from it and parse them somehow (they're designed to be human-readable and in most cases the whois servers explicitly forbid automated queries - so be careful).

An alternative is to discover the whois protocol (which I'm sure is very simple) and implement it in PHP using fsockopen() etc.

Be careful and polite; I think you should rate-limit the speed you query domains with.

Mark