The Whois protocol control provides an interface for requesting
information about an Internet domain name. When a domain name is
registered, the organization that registers the domain must provide
certain contact information along with technical information such as
the primary name servers for that domain. The Whois protocol enables an
application to query a server that provides that registration
information. The Whois control provides an interface for requesting
that information and returning it to the program so it can be displayed
or processed.
The following properties, methods and events are available for use
by your application:
Initialize
Initialize the control and validate the runtime license key for the
current process. This method is normally not used if the control is
placed on a form in languages such as Visual Basic. However, if the
control is being created dynamically using a function similar to
CreateObject, then the application must call this method to
initialize the component before setting any properties or calling any
other methods in the control.
Connect
Connect to the server, using either a host name or IP address.
Once the connection has been established, the other methods in the
control may be used to retrieve information from the server.
Search
This method submits a search keyword to the server. The keyword may
specify a domain name, a user handle or a user mailbox, depending on
the search type. Note that not all WHOIS servers support all search
types. For example, many servers no longer support searching for user
information based on email addresses.
Read
Read the data returned by the server, storing it in a string variable
or byte array that is specified by the caller. This will contain the
information about the domain specified when the Search method was
called. Note that the data returned will typically be text, however
it may not follow the same end-of-line conventions as Windows. For
example, if the server is a UNIX or Linux system, the end-of-line may
be indicated by a single linefeed, rather than a
carriage-return/linefeed pair. Your application will have to account
for this if the data is being displayed as-is to a user.
Disconnect
Disconnect from the server and release the memory allocated for that
client session. After this method is called, the client session is no
longer valid.
Uninitialize
Unload the Windows Sockets library and release any resources that
have been allocated for the current process. This is the last method
call that the application should make prior to terminating. This is
only necessary if the application has previously called the
Initialize method.