8 ms·

Tldx – CLI tool for fast domain name discovery

90 points by Brandutchmen 1y ago

Brandutchmen 1y ago
I’m always building small tools for myself that end up buried in private repos. I figured it was time to start sharing a few that others might find useful. Just published tldx, a CLI tool I use to quickly check if a domain name is available across a bunch of TLDs and variations. Hopefully, some of you CLI enthusiasts can find it useful!
- cranberryturkey 1y ago
  need --suggest "..." --max 100
  - Brandutchmen 1y ago
    I'm wanting to add something like this. Besides length, what would you think would be a good way to sort suggestions here?
    - cranberryturkey 1y ago
      just alphabetically easier to read imo
      - Brandutchmen 1y ago
        good suggestion Currently, it just streams out whichever whois servers respond first. Sorting is a good improvement!
        cranberryturkey 1y ago
        Agreed. I’d provide two lists both sorted. First a list of taken then a list of available.
        Brandutchmen 1y ago
        I wonder if it'll be good to go from a line-by-line print to an actual TUI. That'd make sorting + dynamically inserting new domains make sense
        dayjah 1y ago
        Great tool! Prior me is sad this didn’t exist! I’d be fine with a live summary status updating showing # available and # taken. Hitting ctrl+c resulting in printing the lists as above. Also perhaps a —timeout flag, or similar as I may only want to wait 5 minutes / length of time it takes to steep tea for answers.
        cranberryturkey 1y ago
        i'd rather be able to pipe the results to a domains.txt file to be honest.
croes 1y ago
What’s the difference between https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx?tab=readme-ov-file#tldx-google-youtube-reddit https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx?tab=readme-ov-file#t... and https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx?tab=readme-ov-file#tldx-google-youtube-reddit-1 https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx?tab=readme-ov-file#t...
- phinnaeus 1y ago
  Surely just a typo in the readme
  - Brandutchmen 1y ago
    Yep! There's supposed to be two examples there... Fixed now :)
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  Good eye. Fixed now :)
dedicate 1y ago
The core problem: The good old days of easy domain hunting are long gone...
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  I agree. That's why I love using a permutation tool like this. It has had some surprising finds so far. Though it's still a cope for the real problem of domain squatting.
- amelius 1y ago
  My version of the tool: #!/bin/sh echo "Don't bother, all the good names have been taken"
- akoculu 1y ago
  I just got some good domains like mitte.ai and told.so a few months ago
cb321 1y ago
Since identifier bike shedding is more broad than only top-level domain names, readers interested in a tool like this might also be interested in https://github.com/c-blake/thes https://github.com/c-blake/thes - a command-line thesaurus utility written in Nim and organized around the Moby Thesaurus format. An example usage might be: $ thes -n5 lofty airy gaudy high showy brand sound big grand lurid steep clear valid erect grave noble tall lucid logo fancy great proud tony regal Observant readers might notice 3 banks of alphabetic sorting for the 3 kinds of synonyms - reciprocal/reflected (airy..tony), defined but irreciprocal (brand..valid), and wilder made-up names/phrases someone got into Moby (just logo in this example). These can be configured to show up in 3 distinct terminal colors. Besides the prefix/suffix ideas of `tldx` in TFA, "synonymity" could also be incorporated, but you might need a higher quality source of such than Moby which has kind of a "big tent" aspect to its synonym lists.
a_dabbler 1y ago
You should consider adding DNS checks prior to WHOIS. Whois is unreliable and you can be quickly blocked, doing a quick SOA DNS request can help reduce your WHOIS queries when the domain definitely exists (no SOA is not enough to confirm domain is unregistered but existing SOA is enough to confirm a domain is registered)
- indigodaddy 1y ago
  So only do a whois when no SOA exists. That's clever.
  - Brandutchmen 1y ago
    Yeah! Excited to have a short circuit.
- Arubis 1y ago
  WHOIS is actually scheduled for sunset by IANA: https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/icann-update-launching-rdap-sunsetting-whois-27-01-2025-en https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/icann-update-...
  - Brandutchmen 1y ago
    This is good to know! I'll migrate this over to RDAP
  - Brandutchmen 1y ago
    I switched out whois with RDAP as the primary. It now goes RDAP -> DNS check -> whois. Much faster, too. Thank you again for this!
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  Good advice! DNS check -> RDAP seems to be the right way to take this.
akoculu 1y ago
installation fails for me λ brew tap brandonyoungdev/tldx λ brew install tldx ==> Fetching brandonyoungdev/tldx/tldx ==> Downloading https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/releases/download/ https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/releases/download/ curl: (56) The requested URL returned error: 404 Error: tldx: Failed to download resource "tldx" Download failed: https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/releases/download/v1.0.1/tldx_1.0.1_darwin_arm64.tar.gz https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/releases/download/v1...
- ashleyhindle 1y ago
  Same here
  - Brandutchmen 1y ago
    Could you try: https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/issues/10 https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/issues/10
    - ashleyhindle 1y ago
      That worked beautifully - thanks!
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/issues/10 https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/issues/10
noperator 1y ago
You can also use https://github.com/noperator/raink https://github.com/noperator/raink to brainstorm TLDs that are relevant to some topic you care about. For example: curl -s https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt | raink -f /dev/stdin -p 'which of these TLDs is most related to the concept of "hacking"?' | jq -r 'map(.value)[:10]' [ "BLACK", "COMSEC", "TOOLS", "SECURITY", "ZERO", "EXPOSED", "FORUM", "SHELL", "BOT", "SOFTWARE" ] Those are all in the IANA list but not all can be registered—just showing as PoC. See https://bishopfox.com/blog/raink-llms-document-ranking https://bishopfox.com/blog/raink-llms-document-ranking for more background.
- noitpmeder 1y ago
  Are you the creator of that project?
  - Brandutchmen 1y ago
    I'd assume so? Usernames on HN and GitHub match?

90 points by Brandutchmen 1y ago

I’m always building small tools for myself that end up buried in private repos. I figured it was time to start sharing a few that others might find useful. Just published tldx, a CLI tool I use to quickly check if a domain name is available across a bunch of TLDs and variations. Hopefully, some of you CLI enthusiasts can find it useful!

cranberryturkey 1y ago
need --suggest "..." --max 100
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  I'm wanting to add something like this. Besides length, what would you think would be a good way to sort suggestions here?
  - cranberryturkey 1y ago
    just alphabetically easier to read imo
    - Brandutchmen 1y ago
      good suggestion Currently, it just streams out whichever whois servers respond first. Sorting is a good improvement!
      - cranberryturkey 1y ago
        Agreed. I’d provide two lists both sorted. First a list of taken then a list of available.
        Brandutchmen 1y ago
        I wonder if it'll be good to go from a line-by-line print to an actual TUI. That'd make sorting + dynamically inserting new domains make sense
        dayjah 1y ago
        Great tool! Prior me is sad this didn’t exist! I’d be fine with a live summary status updating showing # available and # taken. Hitting ctrl+c resulting in printing the lists as above. Also perhaps a —timeout flag, or similar as I may only want to wait 5 minutes / length of time it takes to steep tea for answers.
        cranberryturkey 1y ago
        i'd rather be able to pipe the results to a domains.txt file to be honest.

croes 1y ago

What’s the difference between https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx?tab=readme-ov-file#tldx-google-youtube-reddit https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx?tab=readme-ov-file#t... and https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx?tab=readme-ov-file#tldx-google-youtube-reddit-1 https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx?tab=readme-ov-file#t...

phinnaeus 1y ago
Surely just a typo in the readme
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  Yep! There's supposed to be two examples there... Fixed now :)
Brandutchmen 1y ago
Good eye. Fixed now :)

dedicate 1y ago

The core problem: The good old days of easy domain hunting are long gone...

Brandutchmen 1y ago
I agree. That's why I love using a permutation tool like this. It has had some surprising finds so far. Though it's still a cope for the real problem of domain squatting.
amelius 1y ago
My version of the tool: #!/bin/sh echo "Don't bother, all the good names have been taken"
akoculu 1y ago
I just got some good domains like mitte.ai and told.so a few months ago

cb321 1y ago

Since identifier bike shedding is more broad than only top-level domain names, readers interested in a tool like this might also be interested in https://github.com/c-blake/thes https://github.com/c-blake/thes - a command-line thesaurus utility written in Nim and organized around the Moby Thesaurus format. An example usage might be: $ thes -n5 lofty airy gaudy high showy brand sound big grand lurid steep clear valid erect grave noble tall lucid logo fancy great proud tony regal Observant readers might notice 3 banks of alphabetic sorting for the 3 kinds of synonyms - reciprocal/reflected (airy..tony), defined but irreciprocal (brand..valid), and wilder made-up names/phrases someone got into Moby (just logo in this example). These can be configured to show up in 3 distinct terminal colors. Besides the prefix/suffix ideas of `tldx` in TFA, "synonymity" could also be incorporated, but you might need a higher quality source of such than Moby which has kind of a "big tent" aspect to its synonym lists.

a_dabbler 1y ago

You should consider adding DNS checks prior to WHOIS. Whois is unreliable and you can be quickly blocked, doing a quick SOA DNS request can help reduce your WHOIS queries when the domain definitely exists (no SOA is not enough to confirm domain is unregistered but existing SOA is enough to confirm a domain is registered)

indigodaddy 1y ago
So only do a whois when no SOA exists. That's clever.
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  Yeah! Excited to have a short circuit.
Arubis 1y ago
WHOIS is actually scheduled for sunset by IANA: https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/icann-update-launching-rdap-sunsetting-whois-27-01-2025-en https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/icann-update-...
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  This is good to know! I'll migrate this over to RDAP
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  I switched out whois with RDAP as the primary. It now goes RDAP -> DNS check -> whois. Much faster, too. Thank you again for this!
Brandutchmen 1y ago
Good advice! DNS check -> RDAP seems to be the right way to take this.

akoculu 1y ago

installation fails for me λ brew tap brandonyoungdev/tldx λ brew install tldx ==> Fetching brandonyoungdev/tldx/tldx ==> Downloading https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/releases/download/ https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/releases/download/ curl: (56) The requested URL returned error: 404 Error: tldx: Failed to download resource "tldx" Download failed: https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/releases/download/v1.0.1/tldx_1.0.1_darwin_arm64.tar.gz https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/releases/download/v1...

ashleyhindle 1y ago
Same here
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  Could you try: https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/issues/10 https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/issues/10
  - ashleyhindle 1y ago
    That worked beautifully - thanks!
Brandutchmen 1y ago
https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/issues/10 https://github.com/brandonyoungdev/tldx/issues/10

noperator 1y ago

You can also use https://github.com/noperator/raink https://github.com/noperator/raink to brainstorm TLDs that are relevant to some topic you care about. For example: curl -s https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt | raink -f /dev/stdin -p 'which of these TLDs is most related to the concept of "hacking"?' | jq -r 'map(.value)[:10]' [ "BLACK", "COMSEC", "TOOLS", "SECURITY", "ZERO", "EXPOSED", "FORUM", "SHELL", "BOT", "SOFTWARE" ] Those are all in the IANA list but not all can be registered—just showing as PoC. See https://bishopfox.com/blog/raink-llms-document-ranking https://bishopfox.com/blog/raink-llms-document-ranking for more background.

noitpmeder 1y ago
Are you the creator of that project?
- Brandutchmen 1y ago
  I'd assume so? Usernames on HN and GitHub match?