Support for getting host name

[guyluz11]

Is there a way to get a hostname/dns name from specific IP?.
Or even better, have a way to get the hostname of all the IPs during the scan?.

If not what are the steps that missing in order to add this feature.

[git-elliot]

DNS lookup is already there to get the hostname. As far as scan is concerned, it is made on the local wifi network and hence IP addresses would be local also, most probably won't have any name associated with it.

P.S. - I'm not still clear why you want hostname when scanning for hosts on a network.

[guyluz11]

So I am missing something, where is the hostname stored?, I am expecting it to be stored in the class ActiveHost but it does not contain any hostname.

I am creating a smart hub.
I want to recognize smart devices on the network by vendor name which exists in hostname.
Examples: LIFX-White-5ECF0C, ESP_F5B515

I am thinking of clessefying IP to company by open ports but as nmap is showing me this is not always possible
All 1000 scanned ports on LIFX-White-5ECF0C (55.13.21.149) are closed

[git-elliot]

Sorry my bad for confusing the hostname with domain name. It's been pretty while working on this project. Let me check for the hostname. I'll update if I'm able to retrieve it.

[guyluz11]

Cool thanks.

On an unrelated note.
I am looking at the code and noticed that it cheks one IP at a time, waits for the result and then checks the next IP.
I will try to change it to do it asynchronously, is it something that you will accept as a pull request?.

[git-elliot]

I don't know why I kept it synchronised, yeah please try. I'll check the PR and test it. If it does the same thing then I'll merge into the code.

[git-elliot]

@guyluz11 Please also tell me about which scanner are you talking about. host_scanner or port_scanner?

[guyluz11]

Host scanner.

Also is there a way to remove the PingSummary lines?
PingSummary(transmitted:1, received:0), time: 0 ms, Errors: [NoReply]

[git-elliot]

In host scanner, you can't yield twice that's why for inner stream I used await for.

PingSummary lines can be removed by removing this line. i'll not suggest removing it, but adding a flag to the method named debug.

https://github.com/git-elliot/network_tools/blob/dd606bf36f70ff7ba7e4ccff893dd0f493252dd8/lib/src/host_scanner.dart#L51

[git-elliot]

I'm unable to find any way to get hostname of local IPs. People are claiming it to be done using InternetAddress.reverse() but that only works if the result came from the DNS server.

[guyluz11]

Not sure if this helps but Nmap and host tools for Linux are doing that fine and is very popular.
Maybe there is more documentation about the implementation in Nmap GitHub repo.

I think "Hostname" is also called "local domain name" and "DNS host name" and "mDNS host name".

It can be resolved using avahi-resolve-address command so I guess we can do it by using avahi packages, maybe avahi or multicast_dns.
More research is required.

[guyluz11]

I have found a way to do reverse DNS lookup and get the hostname from IP :D.

After getting an InternetAddress object we need to run .reverse on it and the .host field will get populated.

Example code

final InternetAddress internetAddressWithoutHost = InternetAddress('IP');
final InternetAddress internetAddressWithHost = await internetAddressWithoutHost.reverse();
print(internetAddressWithHost.host);

I will implement it after my pull requests will get accepted.

[git-elliot]

Seems like internetAddressWithoutHost.reverse() is added lately.

[guyluz11]

Host name functionality got merged into dev branch.

I will close this issue now, thanks.