- Is david-garcia/phpwhois a Laravel package?
- No. It is a framework-agnostic Composer library of per-TLD WHOIS handler and parser classes with no service provider, facade, publishable config, or extra.laravel auto-discovery. You instantiate the handler, parser, and socket client manually in your own code. Any container binding, configuration surface, or adapter layer is yours to write and maintain.
- How do I install david-garcia/phpwhois in a Laravel project?
- Run composer require david-garcia/phpwhois and the PSR-4 classes load without touching your application skeleton. There is no registration step because there is no Laravel integration to register; you construct the handler and parser objects where you need them. Pin an exact version in composer.json, since there is no upstream patch stream and the pin is a durable decision rather than a temporary one.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does phpWhois support?
- The library has almost no dependency tree and no framework coupling, so it loads alongside Laravel 8 through 11 without conflict risk. PHP 8.2, 8.3, and 8.4 deprecation compatibility is unverified, and the last release was June 2021. Confirm it installs and runs clean on your exact runtime, including ext-sockets, ext-filter, and ext-ctype, before committing.
- Can I use Http::fake() or Guzzle middleware to test phpWhois lookups?
- No. The library performs synchronous, blocking TCP/43 socket I/O through fsockopen and the sockets extension rather than Laravel's HTTP client or Guzzle. That means Http::fake(), retry policies, proxy configuration, middleware, and per-request timeout governance do not apply. To keep tests fast and deterministic, wrap the library behind your own interface and fake that driver instead of hitting registries.
- What is the license of david-garcia/phpwhois and can I ship it in a commercial product?
- It is GPL-2.0, which is copyleft. Internal, non-distributed SaaS use is typically defensible, but distributing the library inside a shipped or on-prem product, or any derivative of it, triggers source-release obligations for the derivative work. Get counsel sign-off before adoption if a distribution path exists now or within 18 months, and note that forking it under your own namespace does not resolve the license question.
- Does phpWhois support RDAP instead of legacy WHOIS?
- No, it speaks legacy WHOIS over port 43 only. ICANN has standardized on RDAP for gTLDs, and many registries throttle, filter, or decommission port 43, so a WHOIS-only library is betting against the protocol direction of travel. If you adopt it, route calls through a driver-based abstraction so you can add RDAP-first with WHOIS fallback without rewriting call sites.
- How reliable is phpWhois parsing across different TLDs?
- Parsing is regex and string matching handled per-TLD, and registry formats drift continuously. A stale handler table tends to return partial or null fields silently rather than erroring, which is the worst failure class for data consumers. Measure the actual parse success rate across your top 20 TLDs by request volume during a spike, and verify whether failures are loud or silent.
- Will outbound TCP port 43 work on my hosting or cloud provider?
- Not guaranteed. Many cloud providers and PaaS platforms block or rate-limit outbound port 43, which breaks lookups regardless of your code quality. Test egress from your actual runtime image and confirm ext-sockets, ext-filter, and ext-ctype are available. Because every call blocks, push lookups into queued jobs with your own timeout and retry governance.
- What is the recommended way to integrate phpWhois into a Laravel application?
- Adopt it behind an interface and never call it directly. Define a DomainLookupService contract in your domain layer with driver implementations for rdap, whois, and a commercial API, then bind the driver via config and the container. That keeps the library a swappable leaf dependency, lets you queue the blocking socket calls, and makes an RDAP-first migration possible later.
- Is david-garcia/phpwhois actively maintained, and what are the alternatives?
- Signals are weak: one star, zero dependents, a single maintainer, and a last release in June 2021, with no evidence of CI, a test suite, or a security advisory channel. Given the RDAP transition and stale per-TLD parsers, an RDAP client or a commercial WHOIS and domain data API is usually the safer production choice. If you keep the library, plan to own the TLD handler table and name an internal owner for it.