What Python way would you suggest to check whois database records?

Question

I\'m trying to get a webservice up and running that actually requires to check whois databases. What I\'m doing right now is ugly and I\'d like to avoid it as much as I can:

Answer 1

Found this question in the process of my own search for a python whois library.

Don't know that I agree with cdleary's answer that using a library that wraps a command is always the best way to go - but I can see his reasons why he said this.

Pro: cmd-line whois handles all the hard work (socket calls, parsing, etc)

Con: not portable; module may not work depending on underlying whois command. Slower, since running a command and most likely shell in addition to whois command. Affected if not UNIX (Windows), different UNIX, older UNIX, or older whois command

I am looking for a whois module that can handle whois IP lookups and I am not interested in coding my own whois client.

Here are the modules that I (lightly) tried out and more information about it:

pywhoisapi:

• Home: http://code.google.com/p/pywhoisapi/
• Design: REST client accessing ARIN whois REST service
• Pros: Able to handle IP address lookups
• Cons: Able to pull information from whois servers of other RIRs?

BulkWhois

• Home: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/BulkWhois/0.2.1
• Design: telnet client accessing whois telnet query interface from RIR(?)
• Pros: Able to handle IP address lookups
• Cons: Able to pull information from whois servers of other RIRs?

pywhois:

• Home: http://code.google.com/p/pywhois/
• Design: REST client accessing RRID whois services
• Pros: Accessses many RRIDs; has python 3.x branch
• Cons: does not seem to handle IP address lookups

python-whois:

• Home: http://code.google.com/p/python-whois/
• Design: wraps "whois" command
• Cons: does not seem to handle IP address lookups

whoisclient - fork of python-whois

• Home: http://gitorious.org/python-whois
• Design: wraps "whois" command
• Depends on: IPy.py
• Cons: does not seem to handle IP address lookups

Update: I ended up using pywhoisapi for the reverse IP lookups that I was doing