Query RDAP registration and last-changed events for a domain using curl + jq. No registry lookup table needed — rdap.org bootstraps automatically.

README.md

rdap-domain-events.sh

A minimal Bash script to query registration and last changed dates for any domain name using the RDAP protocol — the modern, structured replacement for WHOIS.

$ whois2 google.com
registration: 1997-09-15T04:00:00Z
last changed: 2019-09-09T15:39:04Z

$ whois2 adskahsjdk.ai; echo $?
RDAP error: Object not found - Object not found
1

Why RDAP instead of WHOIS?

ICANN has officially replaced WHOIS with RDAP. The key advantages for scripting:

• Structured JSON responses — no fragile text parsing with grep/sed
• Consistent field names across all registries
• Proper HTTP status codes for error handling
• UTF-8 and internationalized domain names supported natively

Why rdap.org as the endpoint?

Traditional WHOIS requires knowing which registry serves a given TLD. rdap.org acts as a bootstrap resolver: it looks up the correct authoritative RDAP server automatically, so no lookup table is needed in the script.

Dependencies

• curl
• jq (>= 1.6)

Both are available in standard package repositories on all major Linux distributions and macOS (via Homebrew).

Installation

curl -sL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/TorstenC/2c2e2676629c6a601711f0450552a3f0/raw/rdap-domain-events.sh \
  -o ~/.local/bin/whois2
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/whois2

Usage

whois2 <domain>

Exit code 0 on success, 1 on RDAP error (domain not found, registry unavailable, etc.).

Notable implementation details

has("errorCode") for error detection

if jq -e 'has("errorCode")' <<< "$json" >/dev/null 2>&1; then

Using has() checks for key existence in the JSON object regardless of the value — more reliable than .errorCode?, which can silently pass when the key is present but null.

Here-string instead of echo pipe

jq -r '...' <<< "$json"

Avoids a subshell and an extra process compared to echo "$json" | jq. It's the idiomatic Bash pattern for feeding a variable into jq.

set -euo pipefail

Ensures the script exits immediately on errors, treats unset variables as errors, and propagates failures through pipelines.

License

MIT

rdap-domain-events.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

domain="${1:?Usage: $0 <domain>}"

json="$(curl -sL "https://rdap.org/domain/$domain")"

# Prüfen: Fehlerobjekt vorhanden?
if jq -e 'has("errorCode")' <<< "$json" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    title=$(jq -r '.title // "Unknown error"' <<< "$json")
    desc=$(jq -r '.description[0] // empty' <<< "$json")
    echo "RDAP error: $title${desc:+ - $desc}"
    exit 1
fi

# Events sicher extrahieren
jq -r '
  (.events // [])
  | map(select(.eventAction == "registration" or .eventAction == "last changed"))
  | if length == 0 then
        "No relevant events found"
    else
        .[] | "\(.eventAction): \(.eventDate)"
    end
' <<< "$json"