.. _example_reverse_lookup:

Reverse DNS lookup
==================

Reverse DNS lookup involves determining the hostname associated with a given IP
address.
This example shows how reverse lookup can be done using unbound module.

For the reverse DNS records, the special domain in-addr.arpa is reserved. 
For example, a host name for the IP address ``74.125.43.147`` can be obtained
by issuing a DNS query for the PTR record for address
``147.43.125.74.in-addr.arpa.``

Source code
-----------

::

    #!/usr/bin/python
    import unbound

    ctx = unbound.ub_ctx()
    ctx.resolvconf("/etc/resolv.conf")

    status, result = ctx.resolve(unbound.reverse("74.125.43.147") + ".in-addr.arpa.", unbound.RR_TYPE_PTR, unbound.RR_CLASS_IN)
    if status == 0 and result.havedata:
        print "Result.data:", result.data.domain_list
    elif status != 0:
        print "Resolve error:", unbound.ub_strerror(status)

In order to simplify the python code, unbound module contains the
:meth:`unbound.reverse` function which reverses the hostname components.
This function is defined as follows::

    def reverse(domain):
        return '.'.join([a for a in domain.split(".")][::-1])