Can I use Bonjour from command line?

Question

Is it possible to use Bonjour from command line? For example if I want to register a service I type something like that: bonjour -register service_name port. And then Bonjour allocate a free IP for my service. Or, for example, if I want to see a list of available services I type something like: bonjour -showServices. And then I get list of all available services with their names, IP addresses and ports. Does something like that exist?

I am kind of confused by the available documentation. For example here, in the beginning of the document I see:

To register your service, call DNSServiceRegister.

Where should I call it? In the command line? In Java? In C++? In python? It is kind of strange that this kind of context is not provided.

In general, I find just a general information about zeroconf and Bonjour (what it is supposed to do). But I cannot find something concrete and simple. Like "Hello World" examples of usage of Bonjour.

Can anybody help me with that?

Answer 1

Yes, it is certainly possible. Take a look at the man page for mDNS

Answer 2

dns-sd is the command line program that works on both windows and Mac OS X.

I often use it to tunnel iTunes shares over the internet with ssh. My typical use is dns-sd -P my_music _daap._tcp. local 3690 localhost 127.0.0.1. This assumes that I've set up an ssh tunnel listen on localhost port 3690 to port 3689 of the host sharing iTunes on the foreign network. This makes a little iTunes share icon appear in iTunes named "my_music".