[Freeipa-devel] Structured DNS record API proposal

[Martin Kosek]

On Thu, 2011-09-15 at 15:28 -0400, Adam Young wrote:
> On 09/14/2011 12:18 PM, Martin Kosek wrote: 
> > Attached in the txt file. If you have any comments or suggestions to
> > this proposal, please let me know.
> > 
> > https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/1766
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Freeipa-devel mailing list
> > Freeipa-devel at redhat.com
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/freeipa-devel
> 
> 
> ACK.  Proposal looks like it will work fairly easily with the UI.
> We'll have to make some chagnes due to the Add doing something
> different based on the type, but that is the case anyway.

Yes, I was thinking how can we integrate this new API to WebUI. AFAIK
you use dnsrecord-add $ZONE $REC --a-rec=... --mx-rec=... for adding a
new DNS record and dnsrecord-mod $ZONE $REC --mx-rec=... when for
example the mx record is being modified. All MX values (even the
unmodified ones) are passed to dnsrecord-mod.

1) I was wondering how the new dnsrecord-<rrtype>-add commands can be
used. I suppose WebUI will know a list of DNS record types with these
new structured commands and offer the user new window to add a record
for these types instead of typing them directly to the text box as it is
now.

2) But my main concern here is how the modification of current DNS
records should work. Say, we have 2 MX records for example.com. How can
we modify one of it in a new structured interface?

We would have to implement dnsrecord-mx-show method so that you can fill
all the text areas (preference, mailserver). Question is how to refer
the value we want to show since DNS records are multivalued. We could
pass --dnsrecord="..." with DNS record value, e.g. "0 mx.example.com."
and then use the same value for dnsrecord-mx-mod. The whole command
sequence would look this way:

dnsrecord-find example.com      -- get all DNS records for example.com
dnsrecord-show example.com @    -- show DNS records directly in the zone
NS: "ns.example.com"
MX: "0 mx1.example.com."
MX: "1 mx2.example.com." << user wants to modify this one -> new window

dnsrecord-mx-show example.com --dnsrecord="1 mx1.example.com."
PREFERENCE: 1	         << user modifies this to 0
MAILSERVER: mx2.example.com.

dnsrecord-mx-mod example.com --dnsrecord="1 mx1.example.com." --preference=0


What do you think about this API for record modification?

Martin