What is a WHOIS API?
In case you were wondering what is a WHOIS API or WHOIS REST API, and what does it do, here’s the best explanation that I could think of. A big plus of this explanation is you don’t have to be one bit technical to understand it. First of all WHOIS is a set of information when an individual or a company registers a domain name like www.somethinggreat.com, for their web site. That set of information consists of name, surname, company name, telephone number, email address, and other various information.
Now you understand the first part, to explain the second part, we’ll play a game.
Here are the rules of the game. Spend ten to fifteen seconds, no more, studying the letters below. Then look away and write down as many letters as you can remember.
Don’t scroll down too much 🙂
GBLLAO SOWHI PIA HGONSIT DMISOAN TOOSL
If you are like most people, you probably remembered about seven to ten letters. That’s because there’s a limit to the amount of information we can juggle at once.
Now scroll down to see what happens.
GLOBAL WHOIS API HOSTING DOMAINS TOOLS
WHOIS REST API
What do you think how many letters would you remember this time? If you are somewhat familiar with domain industry you can probably memorize all of them. So what’s the difference? Well, first you were trying to remember raw data, and second you were remembering concepts: GLOBAL, WHOIS, API, HOSTING, DOMAINS, TOOLS. In your head there was a meaning attached to these concepts.
In computer code, you can’t work much with raw data (like WHOIS), but with an API, raw data gets parsed in “concepts” and you can create wonderful new service. To a computer, instead of getting “raw data WHOIS”, you are getting: name, surname, company name, email address, and other various information. In other words, WhoAPI transforms raw domain data into machine-readable outputs. This way, humans using software can better understand the data that’s behind the domains they are looking at.
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