In 2009 I wrote a brief series of posts where I’d implement something in less than 15 lines of Ruby.

Yesterday I took Dom, a Python-based tool for accessing the Domainr API, and rewrote it as a tiny Ruby script¹. The script turned out to be so small that I thought I could squeeze it down to less than 15 lines. I was right²!

Here it is, complete with colored output!

# encoding: utf-8
%w(json open-uri).each { |lib| require lib }
abort "Usage: #{File.basename __FILE__} [query]" unless ARGV.first

response = open("http://domai.nr/api/json/search?q=#{ARGV.first}").read

JSON.parse(response)["results"].each do |domain|
  symbol = if domain["availability"] == "available"
    "\e[32m✓\e[0m" # 32 = green
  else
    "\e[31m✗\e[0m" # 31 = red
  end
  puts "#{symbol} #{domain['domain']}"
end

Drop that baby in your PATH and chmod +x it for all of your domain name reconnaissance needs.

The last time around I dropped the series because I ran out of ideas. I probably won’t pick it back up again for real unless I have a good list of things to implement. Let me know if you have any ideas :)