[Freeipa-devel] Structured DNS record API proposal

[Jakub Hrozek]

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 08:25:01AM +0200, Jan Cholasta wrote:
> On 21.9.2011 23:55, Dmitri Pal wrote:
> >On 09/21/2011 10:27 AM, Adam Young wrote:
> >>On 09/20/2011 11:11 AM, Martin Kosek wrote:
> >>>On Tue, 2011-09-20 at 10:02 -0400, Adam Young wrote:
> >>>>This discussion got me thinking, always a dangerous proposal:
> >>>>
> >>>>We are currently exposing record add with the lie  that  when you add a
> >>>>record, it has a type.  THe reality is that a record is just this big
> >>>>collection of multi value attributes, and each of those  is the "type"
> >>>>of the record.
> >>>The way I see it is that we have different types of Resource Records
> >>>with a (domain) name that can be shared.
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>If all of the 'records'  have the same idnsname, then they really fall
> >>>>under the same Record object in LDAP.
> >>>Yes.
> >>>
> >>>>What if we focuses on the attribtutes themselves, and add the type info
> >>>>there.
> >>>I thought we do this already.
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>Pie in the sky proposal.   Treat it as a starting point:
> >>>>
> >>>>   From the webui perspective
> >>>>dnsrecord-add   allows the case where it just has the the idnsname with
> >>>>no "records"
> >>>>
> >>>>dnsrecordattr-mod  takes record type specific values.
> >>>>
> >>>>To add a location entry:
> >>>>
> >>>>ipa dnsrecordattr-mod --append location --lat-deg=INT --lat-min=INT
> >>>>--lat-sec=FLOAT --lat-dir=ENUM --lon-deg=INT --lon-min=INT
> >>>>--lon-sec=FLOAT --lon-dir=ENUM --alt=FLOAT --h-precision=FLOAT
> >>>>--v-precision=FLOAT
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>And to remove it
> >>>>
> >>>>ipa dnsrecordattr-mod --remove location --lat-deg=INT --lat-min=INT
> >>>>--lat-sec=FLOAT --lat-dir=ENUM --lon-deg=INT --lon-min=INT
> >>>>--lon-sec=FLOAT --lon-dir=ENUM --alt=FLOAT --h-precision=FLOAT
> >>>>--v-precision=FLOAT
> >>>So if user would want to remove a LOC record, he would have to pass all
> >>>these attributes to refer which attribute value to remove?
> >>I think that is the case anyway.  Since a DNS record is really just an
> >>multivalue attribute,   you would now have to do  a dns-record-mod
> >>with the list of all LOC records that you don't want to delete.  I
> >>used this as an example because it is the most complex case.
> >>
> >>Just thinking it through...I'm not certain I like the "one command per
> >>record type"  as it changes a lot of other assumptions.  DNS is a
> >>wierd beast already.
> >>
> >>I've spent a lot of time on the DNS ui, and it is pretty tricky  to
> >>get right.  I'm trying to balance the PI against efficient usage.
> >>
> >>What we really need for the fields is a way to specify the format for
> >>a given field, much like the format strings used for group names.  For
> >>example, the LOC  record  is really
> >>
> >><owner>   <TTL>   <class>   LOC d1 [m1 [s1]] {"N"|"S"}  d2 [m2 [s2]]
> >>{"E"|"W"}
> >>                           alt["m"] [siz["m"]     [hp["m"] [vp["m"]]]]
> >>
> >>
> >>And all the WebUI needs is a way to specify that format  to validate.
> >>
> >
> >Can we use augeas for this?
> >Augeas lenses use this kind of the validation and there is python
> >binding so may be we should use augeas as an inspiration or ask for an
> >augeas Javascript solution?
> 
> We can't. Augeas knows how to manipulate config files and only that,
> there is no API for anything else.
> 

Some time ago I wrote a patch to extend Augeas to operate on arbitrary
strings. I never had time to push it upstream, but I think I still have
is somewhere.

Not sure if this approach would help us anyway, we would still have to
wait until this feature made it to RHEL and solve the JS bindings as
well