PHP Domain Checking

I'm getting my feet wet in PHP. I tried to check the first 10 pages of the PHP forum but couldn't find the answer to the following question:

How do you test if a domain is already taken or still available by way of PHP programming?

Sorry if the question has already been answered previously.

 

This should do it with a little tweak.

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=216165

 

Because I thought it was interesting.

function domain_is_taken($domain)
{
	static $whois;
	
	if (!isset($whois))
	{
		include 'phpwhois-4.1.2/whois.main.php';
		$whois = new Whois();
	}
	
	$response = $whois->lookup($domain);
	return !empty($response['regyinfo']['registrar']);
}

PHP:

Usage example:

$domains = array('php.net', 'nicoswd.com', 'efwfffwer.com', 'yahahahs.com');

foreach ($domains AS $domain)
{
	echo "{$domain} is ", domain_is_taken($domain) ? 'Taken' : 'Available', "<br />\n";
}

PHP:

You have to download this class though, and set the path to it right in the function.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpwhois/

 

If you don't want to use the class pointed above, check this: http://www.geekpedia.com/code15_WhoIs-function-for-domain-name-info.html

I posted that a few days ago. I used it to retrieve and parse the name of the domain-name owner, but you could as well use it to see if the domain-name is registered or not, depending on the response retrieved.