dmnr.uk

Domain name search: type a name, see which extensions are free and what Porkbun, GoDaddy and Dynadot charge for them, cheapest first, with the renewal price beside the first-year one. Every extension is checked at several sources, and a row is as sure as its sources agree.

• src/ — the page, its styles, and the search (app.ts), with the parts that need no browser in model.ts.
• data/ — the tables the page ships: Porkbun's, GoDaddy's and Dynadot's prices, the IANA RDAP bootstrap, the root-zone list, and rdap-extra.json, the RDAP servers the bootstrap lacks (io, me, de, ch, us…), each checked by hand. node tools/prices.mjs refreshes them (one source as an argument: porkbun, dynadot, godaddy, rdap, iana); the GoDaddy pass takes ten minutes at its rate limit and needs GODADDY_API_KEY in ../.env.
• api/check.js — a proxy to the registries' RDAP servers for the ones that refuse browsers. src/refusal.js reads a registry's reason out of its 404, where it gives one: a name the registry withholds is "reserved", not "available".
• api/avail.js — the registrars' own availability APIs, asked for a batch of names with the keys the deployment holds; src/providers.js has one adapter per registrar and the parsers the tests feed.
• tools/env-set.sh KEY — takes the value from the clipboard and stores it as KEY in ../.env and in the Vercel production environment, so a registrar key never passes through a terminal or a chat. tools/env-push.sh copies every known key from ../.env to Vercel.
• build.mjs — writes dist/: the data as data.json, the bundled script, the service worker (src/sw.js, which keeps the page openable offline and caches no availability answer), icons, share card, manifest, robots.txt and sitemap.

npm install
npm run build     # dist/
npm test          # node:test over model.ts and api/check.js
npm run e2e       # Chromium at 320px, light and dark; needs the network
npm run serve     # http://localhost:4174/ with api/check mounted

Deploys go through git push: the Vercel project dmnr is linked to github.com/dstengine/dmnr, and every push to main builds and deploys. vercel deploy --prod from this directory still works for a one-off. The /go/ links are redirects to the registrars' own search pages and are kept out of robots.txt.

How a name is checked

Each name is put to several sources and each casts a vote: free, taken, reserved, premium (free at a price the tables do not show), silent (asked, no usable answer) or na (the source does not deal in the extension). verdict() in src/model.ts turns the votes into the row: one taken settles it, reserved next, otherwise the share of sources that said free is the row's confidence — all of them is "available", some of them is "likely free · 60%", none is "ask the registrar". The badge's tooltip names who said what.

The browser asks three sources itself, for every row, eight rows at a time: Cloudflare's and Google's resolvers for nameservers, and the registry's RDAP server (through api/check where it refuses browsers). Names those have not settled go to api/avail twenty at a time, three batches in flight, and the registrars answer there with the keys the deployment holds:

Source	Key(s)	Per call	Notes
GoDaddy	GODADDY_API_KEY	500	The bulk call has a small monthly quota of its own; past it the names are asked one by one, 60 a minute
NameSilo	NAMESILO_API_KEY	200
Name.com	NAMECOM_USERNAME, NAMECOM_TOKEN	50	20 calls a second
Porkbun	PORKBUN_API_KEY, PORKBUN_SECRET_KEY	25	200 names a minute; sustained checking with few registrations is throttled to 50 names per 5 minutes
Spaceship	SPACESHIP_API_KEY, SPACESHIP_API_SECRET	20	30 calls per 30 s; the answer's shape is read loosely until a key confirms it
Dynadot	DYNADOT_API_KEY	100	A regular account answers one name per call and wants the caller's IP whitelisted, which a Vercel function has not got
Gandi	GANDI_PAT	1

A source whose keys are missing is simply not there: api/avail names the sources it has, and the page counts only those. With no keys the verdict rests on DNS and RDAP, as before. Every call is cached at the edge for ten minutes; a rate limit or an error is silence for the names it covered, never an error on the page, and silence lowers the share. Keys never leave the function: nothing logs them and the answer carries only votes.

Not here, and why: Namecheap wants the caller's IP whitelisted; Fastly's Domain Research API (the former Domainr) is billed per request; Hostinger and IONOS need a hosting account; Cloudflare Registrar, Marcaria and Hover publish no API.

Adding a registrar

A registrar earns a column when all of this holds; one "no" is a no.

• A price list a script can read with no account and no key, so tools/prices.mjs can refresh it: JSON, or a page that carries the whole table in its markup. A page behind a bot wall cannot be refreshed.
• Both prices per extension, the first year and the renewal, as standard rates before sales (or with the sale marked so the standard can be read).
• US dollars: one currency on the page, or "cheapest first" is a lie.
• At least half of the extensions the page lists, or the column is mostly empty.
• A search URL that takes the typed name and lands on its result with no login, for /go/<registrar>/<domain>.
• robots.txt and the terms allow reading the price page; the refresh is one fetch by hand, not a crawl.
• An ICANN-accredited registrar, or the retail brand of one.

Then a job in tools/prices.mjs writing data/<name>.json ({ asOf, currency, tlds: { tld: [firstYear, renewal] } }), the merge in build.mjs, Extension and Registrar in src/model.ts, REGISTRARS in src/app.ts, the redirect in vercel.json, the texts in src/index.html, and the tests.

MIT licence.