TL;DR: I wrote a tool to manage DNS records through any GIT repository, hence versioning the zone records. It uses Gandi’s LiveDNS API.

When updating my DNS records, I need to use the web interface of my registrar (Gandi). The zone records are versioned, but I can’t easily display diffs, let users propose changes through Pull Requests, or comment on potential implications of changes before applying the change. The best source version control available today is git, so why not using it for DNS zones?

Being a supporter of Infrastructure-as-Code, I wrote a small Python tool to manage my DNS records from a versioned (GIT) repository. You need to be a user of Gandi’s LiveDNS, or you will have to adapt the tool to your registrar’s API.

Configuration

1. Fork the main repository: https://github.com/MickaelBergem/gandi-livedns-zone-manager
2. Clone it locally
3. Retrieve your LiveDNS API key: go to your Gandi account, under “Security”, “Generate your API key”.
4. Put your key in a api_key.txt file in the repository
5. Test your configuration by running ./livedns.py view

This should output your current zones:

$ ./livedns.py view
== Zone test-zone [580549ec-c25f-11e7-9d8f-00163e6dc886] ==
        No domain associated with this zone.
        1 records in this zone:

        CNAME   10800   test                access.mail.gandi.net.

Usage

# Pull the zones and write them on disk
$ ./livedns.py pull
== Zone test-zone [580549ec-c25f-11e7-9d8f-00163e6dc886] ==
        Writing... done (test-zone_580549ec-c25f-11e7-9d8f-00163e6dc886.txt)
$ ls -l zones
-rw-r--r-- 1 suixo users  133 24 nov.  00:06 test-zone_580549ec-c25f-11e7-9d8f-00163e6dc886.txt
# Now make some changes in your zone files
$ vim zones/test-zone_580549ec-c25f-11e7-9d8f-00163e6dc886.txt
# And push the changes to your registrar 
$ ./livedns.py push
Found zone test-zone (580549ec-c25f-11e7-9d8f-00163e6dc886)
        Uploading the zone... ok
        Server answered: DNS Zone Record Created
# The changes are immediately effective
$ dig CNAME test.test-domain.org
[...]
;; ANSWER SECTION:
test.test-domain.org. 10800    IN      CNAME   access.mail.gandi.net.
[...]

Benefits

• you can manage the zone files exactly like usual source files, with your favorite Version Control System such as git
• if you are using GitHub or a similar platform, your collaborators can submit Pull Requests to change the zone file
• changes are effective immediately

I hope this little tool will help you, do not hesitate to share suggestions or to report bugs on the project page :)