# weppos/whois

An intelligent — pure Ruby — WHOIS client and parser.

Repository: https://github.com/weppos/whois
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/whois
Homepage: https://whoisrb.org
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: whois, ruby
Last push: 2026-08-11T07:39:43+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 76/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 97, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6276, "days_push": 22, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1177, forks 289 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:52.727733+00:00)

## What it is
A pure Ruby WHOIS client library that performs WHOIS lookups for domains, TLDs, IPv4, and IPv6 addresses, with intelligent server guessing and extensible custom server definitions. Parsing of WHOIS responses is provided by the companion whois-parser gem, and a CLI is included for console queries.

## Use cases
- look up whois record for a domain name in ruby
- query whois server for an ip address
- check domain registration availability programmatically
- parse whois response into structured data
- find expiration date of a domain
- run whois queries from the command line
- define custom whois servers for new tlds

## When to choose
- you need WHOIS lookups in a Ruby or JRuby application with zero external dependencies
- you want a mature, production-tested library (in use since 2009) with semantic versioning
- you need extensible WHOIS server definitions and structured parsing via whois-parser

## When to avoid
- you need WHOIS in a non-Ruby language
- you need RDAP instead of legacy WHOIS protocol
- you need bulk high-rate lookups, which may hit registrar rate limits

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: http-client, parser, cli
- domain: networking, developer-tools
- platform: ruby, jvm, cli, cross-platform
- tags: whois, domain-lookup, ip-lookup, tld, pure-ruby, dns, command-line

## Member repositories
- weppos/whois (main) score 76

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:52.727733+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:26:18.773535+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/weppos/whois (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:52.727733+00:00, sha 22b762c22da2)
  - homepage: https://whoisrb.org (fetched 2026-08-29T12:32:53.975259+00:00, sha a191d955cc1d)
  - site_page: https://whoisrb.org/about (fetched 2026-08-29T12:32:53.978010+00:00, sha 8df3e7c3a65f)
  - site_page: https://whoisrb.org/docs (fetched 2026-08-29T12:32:53.979723+00:00, sha c21d4dd1bcf0)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.