How can I do DNS lookups in Python, including referring to /etc/hosts?

Question

dnspython will do my DNS lookups very nicely, but it entirely ignores the contents of /etc/hosts.

Is there a python library call which will do the right

Answer 1

I found this way to expand a DNS RR hostname that expands into a list of IPs, into the list of member hostnames:

#!/usr/bin/python

def expand_dnsname(dnsname):
    from socket import getaddrinfo
    from dns import reversename, resolver
    namelist = [ ]
    # expand hostname into dict of ip addresses
    iplist = dict()
    for answer in getaddrinfo(dnsname, 80):
        ipa = str(answer[4][0])
        iplist[ipa] = 0
    # run through the list of IP addresses to get hostnames
    for ipaddr in sorted(iplist):
        rev_name = reversename.from_address(ipaddr)
        # run through all the hostnames returned, ignoring the dnsname
        for answer in resolver.query(rev_name, "PTR"):
            name = str(answer)
            if name != dnsname:
                # add it to the list of answers
                namelist.append(name)
                break
    # if no other choice, return the dnsname
    if len(namelist) == 0:
        namelist.append(dnsname)
    # return the sorted namelist
    namelist = sorted(namelist)
    return namelist

namelist = expand_dnsname('google.com.')
for name in namelist:
    print name

Which, when I run it, lists a few 1e100.net hostnames: