Web services provided by the registry

General points

This section is aimed at Internet service providers that are already members of the AFNIC and as background information only for prospective members.

If you would like an introduction to Web services, visit the AFNIC training course (in French).

All our Web services use the SOAP protocol. The above link will take you to a website that describes the implementation of SOAP for your preferred programming language.

We provide examples of client programs in different languages and offer a WSDL file for each service. These files describe, in meta language, how the service is provided and specify the available methods, required configuration, which of our servers you need to contact to run the service, and so on. In principle there is at least one SOAP library in your preferred language which is capable of using these WSDL files. The benefit of these files is that they greatly simplify the process of integrating our Web services into your information system.

Please note that we strongly recommend that you use HTTPS to ensure the security of exchanges: this will allow you to send encrypted messages to our servers and to verify that responses have in fact come from our servers. To implement this, simply download our root certificate and tell your information system where it is located on your machine (we will show you how to carry out this step in some example clients). You will need to log in to the system using your usual member password. However, if your information system does not allow you to use HTTPS, this is not essential. You can access the same services by converting https:// URLs to http:// URLs !

Services

The services that are currently available are listed below:

• Domain: provides access to functions for manipulating domain names. You can check whether a domain name is free, request a list of the domains you currently manage, and so on.
• Form: allows you manipulate your current forms...
• Ticket: allows you manipulate your current tickets....
• Titulaire: provides access to domain names holders data. You can ask for the holder's key, Nic-handle and e-mail address giving his first name, surname, date and place of birth.
• Contact: allows you to create contact objects.
• Query: allows you to retrieve the holder of a domain name and question the AFNIC database on all the domains in yours portfolio.

The available modules are not yet complete and additional information will be added over the coming weeks. At the moment these services can only be used to view information, but we plan to extend this to allow write access in the future.

We suggest that you check the APIs for the various modules regularly. New information will be added on a regular basis!