CLI Reference¶

The apnic command-line interface is a cobra-based program that exposes every capability of the apnic-skills SDK. It is the primary way to query APNIC public data services from a terminal or shell script: delegated stats, RDAP lookups, whois, BGP table analysis, IRR dumps, RPKI repository, cross-RIR REx data, transfers, telemetry, and verification.

The binary is built from cmd/apnic/main.go and the per-domain cmd_*.go files alongside it. Run apnic <command> --help at any time for an authoritative list of flags.

Command Hierarchy¶

The CLI is organised as a root command with 24 subcommands spanning nine functional groups. Top-level commands that do not take a subcommand (for example transfers, filter, history) act directly; group commands (rdap, whois, bgp, irr, rpki, rex, verify) own nested subcommands.

graph LR
    ROOT["apnic (root)"]

    ROOT --> STATS["stats family<br/>delegated/extended/assigned/<br/>ipv6-assigned/legacy/years"]
    ROOT --> RDAP["rdap<br/>ip/cidr/asn/domain/<br/>entity/search/domains/help"]
    ROOT --> WHOIS["whois<br/>ip/asn/raw<br/>+ reverse-dns"]
    ROOT --> BGP["bgp<br/>summary/raw-table/asn-map/<br/>bad-prefixes/per-prefix-length/<br/>used-autnums/spar-prefixes/single-pfx"]
    ROOT --> IRR["irr<br/>&lt;type&gt; / serial"]
    ROOT --> RPKI["rpki<br/>notification/snapshot"]
    ROOT --> REX["rex<br/>network/resources/holder/count"]
    ROOT --> XFERS["transfers family<br/>transfers/transfers-all/changes"]
    ROOT --> VRFY["verify<br/>integrity/md5/asc/pubkey"]
    ROOT --> MISC["filter / history /<br/>stats-telemetry"]

    STATS -.-> |"--date"| HIST["historical snapshot"]
    XFERS -.-> |"--year / --date"| HIST
    BGP -.-> |"--bgp-source"| SRC["current / au / hk"]

Global Flags¶

These persistent flags are inherited by every subcommand. They configure the underlying SDK Client (see client.go).

Anti-scraping flags¶

APNIC's FTP and web endpoints throttle or block obvious automation. The defaults (--stealth=true, Chrome UA, 200–800 ms jitter) are tuned for unattended batch use. For a polite, identifiable bot, disable stealth and set your own UA:

apnic --stealth=false --user-agent "my-research-bot/1.0 (contact: me@example.org)" delegated

To throttle aggressively, combine --rate-limit and --jitter:

apnic --rate-limit 1 --jitter 500ms-1500ms irr inetnum

Chunked download flags¶

APNIC FTP throttles large files per connection, so the SDK downloads them with parallel HTTP Range requests. --max-concurrent-downloads controls the parallelism (not the number of chunks), and --chunk-size sets the target chunk size for large files (default splits the file evenly). See the chunk-size-adaptive memory note for details.

apnic --max-concurrent-downloads 8 --chunk-size 2MB irr route

Output Modes¶

Every subcommand supports two output modes:

• Human-readable (default): TSV or labelled key/value lines, with a leading # comment summarising the count and parameters. Suitable for piping into awk, sort, uniq.
• JSON (--json): indented JSON reflecting the SDK return type verbatim. Suitable for programmatic consumption with jq.

flowchart LR
    A["apnic subcommand"] --> B{--json?}
    B -- no --> H["human-readable<br/>TSV + # summary"]
    B -- yes --> J["indented JSON<br/>(SDK return type)"]
    H --> P["pipe: awk/sort/uniq"]
    J --> Q["jq / scripts"]

Quick Examples¶

# Latest delegated stats, human-readable
apnic delegated

# Same, as JSON, piped through jq
apnic --json delegated | jq '.entries[0]'

# RDAP lookup for an IP, point-in-time two years ago
apnic rdap ip 1.1.1.1 --date 2024-06-01T00:00:00Z

# Filter delegated stats for China IPv4 allocations
apnic filter --country CN --type ipv4 --status allocated

# Verify the integrity of the latest delegated stats file
apnic verify integrity --type delegated

# BGP routing-table summary, Hong Kong collector
apnic bgp summary --bgp-source hk

# Historical delegated snapshot for a specific date
apnic history --type delegated --date 20200101

# List years of available historical stats
apnic years

Subcommand Reference¶