Whois Commands¶

The whois command group queries the APNIC whois server (whois.apnic.net:43) and returns either parsed objects or raw text. A reverse-dns top-level command performs PTR lookups against the DNS.

Source: cmd_whois.go.

Command Structure¶

graph TB
    W["whois"]
    W --> WIP["ip &lt;ip&gt;<br/>parsed WhoisInfo"]
    W --> WAS["asn &lt;asn&gt;<br/>parsed WhoisInfo"]
    W --> WRAW["raw &lt;query&gt;<br/>unparsed text"]

    ROOT["apnic (root)"] --> RDNS["reverse-dns &lt;ip&gt;<br/>PTR records"]

whois ip and whois asn parse the response into a WhoisInfo struct (network, CIDR, country, org, parent, created, last-updated). whois raw returns the unparsed text, suitable for ad-hoc queries against any whois object type.

apnic whois ip <ip>¶

Parsed whois lookup for an IP address.

apnic whois ip 1.1.1.1
apnic --json whois ip 1.1.1.1 | jq '.cidr, .country, .org_name'

Human-readable output:

Network: APNIC-LABRADOR
CIDR:    [1.1.1.0/24]
Country: AU
Org:     APNIC-LABRADOR
Parent:  1.0.0.0/8
Created: 2011-04-12
Updated: 2024-01-15

apnic whois asn <asn>¶

Parsed whois lookup for an ASN. Accepts either 13335 or AS13335 (the AS/as prefix is stripped by normalizeASN).

apnic whois asn 13335
apnic whois asn AS13335

Human-readable output prints Network, Country, and Org.

apnic whois raw <query>¶

Raw whois query: returns the unparsed text response. Pass any whois query string (an IP, an ASN, an object key, or a whois search term).

apnic whois raw "1.1.1.1"
apnic whois raw "AS13335"
apnic whois raw -i mnt-by MAINT-APNIC

Output is the verbatim text from the whois server with no transformation. This is the escape hatch when the structured subcommands do not expose a field you need.

apnic reverse-dns <ip>¶

Reverse DNS (PTR) lookup for an IP address. This is a top-level command, not under whois, because it queries DNS rather than the whois server.

apnic reverse-dns 1.1.1.1
apnic --json reverse-dns 1.1.1.1

Human-readable output prints one PTR record per line, or (no PTR records) if none exist. With --json, a JSON array of strings is emitted.

Query Flow¶

sequenceDiagram
    participant U as User
    participant CLI as apnic whois
    participant SDK as apnic.Client
    participant WHOIS as whois.apnic.net:43

    U->>CLI: apnic whois ip 1.1.1.1
    CLI->>SDK: QueryWhoisIP(ctx, "1.1.1.1")
    SDK->>WHOIS: TCP connect :43, send "1.1.1.1\r\n"
    WHOIS-->>SDK: whois text
    SDK->>SDK: parse into WhoisInfo
    SDK-->>CLI: *WhoisInfo
    CLI-->>U: human-readable / --json

For whois raw, the parse step is skipped and the raw text is returned directly. For reverse-dns, the request goes to the resolver (not the whois server) and returns a []string of PTR names.

Global flags of note¶

Output summary¶