gTLD lifecycle

(source: ICANN)

As you are probably aware of, a typical gTLD or nTLD domain runs through multiple phases after it’s expiration date. The last of which is the pendingDelete status which typically lasts 5 days.

If you are serious about getting a domain, it is these very 5 days on which you should become active. (at latest).

Since I still have a reseller account with 1blu business GmbH, I’m going to illustrate howto setup a cronjob for their domain robot. The steps required to set this up, will varry quite a bit.

Code sample

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<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
$client = new GuzzleHttp\Client(['base_uri' => 'https://service.partner4trade.de/live/domain.svc/rest/']);

if (!file_exists(__DIR__ . "/register.lock")) {
    $response0 = $client->request('POST', 'DomainAvailable', ['json' => [
        'Transaction' => [
            'Username' => 'USERNAME',
            'Password' => 'PASSWORD!!!!!',
            'TargetAccount' => 'Accountnummer',
            'ClientTransactionId' => 'randoTransactionID'
        ],
        'Domain' => 'domain.tld'
    ]]);
    $domain_status = json_decode($response0->getBody())->Status;

    if ($domain_status != 0) {
        echo "domain not free! Status: " . $domain_status . "\n";
    } else {
        $response1 = $client->request('POST', 'DomainRegister', ['json' => [
            'Transaction' => [
                'Username' => 'USERNAME',
                'Password' => 'PASSWORD',
                'TargetAccount' => 'Accountnummer',
                'ClientTransactionId' => 'randoTransactionsID2'
            ],
            'Contact0' => 'HANDLE-ID',
            'Contact1' => 'HANDLE-ID',
            'Contact2' => 'HANDLE-ID',
            'Contact3' => 'HANDLE-ID',
            'Domain' => 'domain.tld',
            'Nameserver' => [
                ['Name' => 'ns1.nameserver.tld'],
                ['Name' => 'ns2.nameserver.tld']
            ]
        ]]);

        echo $response1->getBody();
        touch(__DIR__ . "/register.lock");
    }
} else echo "lockfile exists - domain registered hopefully";

What does it do?

1. it requires an external dependency called GuzzleHttp which needs to be installed with composer prior to running
2. In the outer if we check if there is no lock file present and only then continue
3. we then do a DomainAvailability check on the domain and depending on the status (0 = Available) continue
4. If the status != 0 we give a message and stop execution
5. else we perform the Registration attempt
6. in the end we close the outer if with a message that a lockfile exists.

Howto install it

You will need SSH access to your webserver in order to run these steps

1. create a empty directory to store the script
2. install composer: curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
3. install Guzzle in your folder: composer require guzzlehttp/guzzle:^7.0
4. copy&paste the above script with the $EDITOR of your choice in a file named register.php
5. Create a cronjob with crontab -e
6. Include the following 2 lines:

MAILTO=your.mail@provider.tld
* * * * * php -f /root/folder/register.php

Why Availability check?

You can decide that for your self. For me each registration attempt comes with an email from the 1blu domain robot which I guess my account manager also gets. In order to not fall under API abuse, I rather perform this extra step.

Optimizations

Currently the script send an email per minute which can be a bit problematic if they end up in your phone notifications. To reduce the noise, you could use fwrite(STDERR, "message"); to write the output of the registration attempt and for the cron redirect STDOUT to /dev/zero.