App::rdapper - a command-line RDAP client.

General form:

rdapper [OPTIONS] OBJECT

Examples:

rdapper example.com

rdapper --tld foo

rdapper 192.168.0.1

rdapper https://rdap.org/domain/example.com

rdapper --search "exampl*.com"

rdapper retrieves data about internet resources (domain names, IP addresses, and autonymous systems) and outputs the information in a human-readable format.

You can pass any internet resource as an argument; this may be:

• a "forward" domain name such as example.com;
• a top-level domain such as com;
• a IPv4 or IPv6 address or CIDR prefix, such as 192.168.0.1 or 2001:DB8::/32;
• an Autonymous System Number such as AS65536.
• a "reverse" domain name such as 168.192.in-addr.arpa;
• the URL of an RDAP resource such as https://example.com/rdap/domain/example.com.
• the "tagged" handle of an entity, such as an LIR, registrar, or domain admin/tech contact. Because these handles are difficult to distinguish from domain names, you must use the --type argument to explicitly tell rdapper that you want to perform an entity query, .e.g rdapper --type=entity ABC123-EXAMPLE.

rdapper also implements limited support for in-bailiwick nameservers, but you must use the --nameserver argument to disambiguate from domain names. The RDAP server of the parent domain's registry will be queried.

• --registry - display the registry record only. This was the default behaviour prior to v1.12.
• --registrar - follow referral to the registrar's RDAP record (if any) which will be displayed instead of the registry record. If no registrar link can be found, the registry record will be displayed. This option cannot be used with --registry. As of v1.12, this is the default behaviour.
• --both - display both the registry and (if any) registrar RDAP records.
• --reverse - if you provide an IP address or CIDR prefix, then this option causes rdapper to display the record of the corresponding in-addr.arpa or ip6.arpa domain.
• --type=TYPE - explicitly set the object type. rdapper will guess the type by pattern matching the value of OBJECT but you can override this by explicitly setting the --type argument to one of : ip, autnum, domain, nameserver, entity or url.
  • If --type=url is used, rdapper will directly fetch the specified URL and attempt to process it as an RDAP response. If the URL path ends with /help then the response will be treated as a "help" query response (if you want to see the record for the .help TLD, use --type=tld help).
  • If --type=entity is used, OBJECT must be a a string containing a "tagged" handle, such as ABC123-EXAMPLE, as per RFC 8521.
• --$TYPE - alias for --type=$TYPE. eg --domain, --autnum, etc.
• --search - perform a search.
• --help - display help message.
• --version - display package and version.
• --raw - print the raw JSON rather than parsing it.
• --short - omit remarks, notices, links and redactions.
• --bypass-cache - disable local cache of RDAP objects.
• --auth=USER:PASS - HTTP Basic Authentication credentials to be used when accessing the specified resource. This option SHOULD NOT be used unless you explicitly specify a URL, otherwise your credentials may be sent to servers you aren't expecting them to.
• --nocolor - disable ANSI colors in the formatted output.
• --debug -run in debugging mode.

Some RDAP servers support the ability to perform simple substring searches. You can use the --search option to enable this functionality.

When the --search option is used, OBJECT will be used as a search term. If it contains no dots (e.g. exampl*), then rdapper will send a search query for exampl* to all known RDAP servers. If it contains one or more dots (e.g. exampl*.com), it will send the search query to the RDAP server for the specified TLD (if any).

Any errors observed will be printed to STDERR; any search results will be printed to STDOUT.

As of writing, search is only available for domain names.

rdapper is internationalized. When performing RDAP queries, it will provide the user's preferred language in the `Accept-Language` header, however very few RDAP servers currently provide localized responses. Its output will also be translated (where translations are available).

If you would like rdapper to support your preferred language, please see the advice on contributing translations in App::rdapper:l10n

If ~/.rdapper exists, then its contents will be appended to the list of arguments the program runs with. So if it contained

--short
--bypass-cache

Then running rdapper EXAMPLE.COM will behave like rdapper EXAMPLE.COM --short --bypass-cache.

To install, run:

cpanm --sudo App::rdapper

The git repository contains a Dockerfile that can be used to build an image on your local system.

Alternatively, you can pull the image from Docker Hub:

$ docker pull gbxyz/rdapper

$ docker run -it gbxyz/rdapper --help

Copyright (c) 2012-2023 CentralNic Ltd.

Copyright (c) 2023-2025 Gavin Brown.

All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.