expiration_date is instance of list, instead of datetime about whois

[richardpenman]

what is the domain? there may be multiple dates

[richardpenman]

closing due to inactivity

[lelutin]

Hi there, I'm unable to reopen this, but I've found one case where this is happening which might help drive further investigation.

if I query this specific domain, I get lists of datetime objects:

In [5]: import whois
In [6]: whois.whois("communautique.quebec")
Out[6]: 
{'domain_name': ['communautique.quebec', 'COMMUNAUTIQUE.QUEBEC'],
 'registrar': 'TUCOWS, INC.',
 'whois_server': 'whois.tucows.com',
 'referral_url': None,
 'updated_date': [datetime.datetime(2019, 11, 17, 16, 0, 5, 118000),
  datetime.datetime(2019, 11, 17, 16, 0, 5)],
 'creation_date': [datetime.datetime(2014, 11, 21, 6, 5, 4, 794000),
  datetime.datetime(2014, 11, 21, 6, 5, 4)],
 'expiration_date': [datetime.datetime(2024, 11, 21, 6, 5, 4, 794000),
  datetime.datetime(2024, 11, 21, 6, 5, 4)],
...

In this case, the difference between the two objects in each list is just the presence or absence of microseconds.
A tiny bit unrelated but the domain_name entry is also there twice with capitalization difference.

however, super weirdly, if I query another domain in the same TLD, I get datetime objects directly:

In [7]: whois.whois("nic.quebec")
Out[7]: 
{'domain_name': 'nic.quebec',
 'registrar': 'PointQuébec, Inc.',
 'whois_server': 'whois.nic.quebec',
 'referral_url': None,
 'updated_date': datetime.datetime(2020, 8, 10, 6, 18, 4, 440000),
 'creation_date': datetime.datetime(2014, 1, 23, 13, 46, 27, 349000),
 'expiration_date': datetime.datetime(2029, 1, 23, 13, 46, 27, 349000),

the two domains seem to be using a different whois server, so the tucows server is producing this result in this case.

[lelutin]

I've traced what's happening and it seems that the whois server recursing is causing the duplication. we're getting a full response from the host at 'quebec.whois-servers.net', and the response from 'whois.tucows.com' gets appended to what we've already received, thus the duplicated domain name and dates.

[lelutin]

when I trace what's happening with nic.quebec, the same recuse and response duplication happens, however in that case the domain name is not capitalized in the second and the date format and content is the same, so we're not getting two distinct sets of information