NAME

UltraDNS - Client API for the NeuStar UltraDNS Transaction Protocol

SYNOPSIS

use UltraDNS;

# establish a secure connection
my $udns = UltraDNS->connect("$host:$port", $sponsor, $username, $password);

# Queue up one or more actions to be performed
$udns->CreateARecord($zone);
$udns->CreateCNAMERecord($zone);

# Send actions as a single transaction
$udns->commit(...); # throws exception on error

# queue up and commit more requests on the same connection

Getting multiple results:

# Actions can return results. Each return value is a reference
# to where the result will be stored when commit() is called.
$result_ref1 = $udns->GetZoneInfo($zone);
$result_ref2 = $udns->GetMXRecordsOfZone($zone);

$udns->commit(...);

# $result_ref values above now refer to the RPC::XML results for
# each method, use ($$result_ref1)->value to get the value

Getting a single result:

# utility method that calls commit and returns the dereferenced result
$result = $udns->do( ...some method that queues a request... );

$result = $udns->do( $udns->AutoSerialUpdateState );
# $result is either 1 or 0 (no need to deref or call value() method)

# also works for multiple method calls
@results = $udns->do( ...multiple method calls... );

DESCRIPTION

A simple and efficient client for the NeuStar UltraDNS Transaction Protocol as defined in http://www.ultradns.net/api/NUS_API_XML.pdf (version 3.0, dated September 5, 2008).

All requests are batched and performed in transactions. A single secure connection is established and reused for any number of transactions. Multiple concurrent connections can be used if required.

All errors are reported via exceptions.

STATUS

All UltraDNS methods are supported.

Experimentation and feedback are encouraged.

METHODS

connect

$udns = UltraDNS->connect($host_and_port, $sponsor, $username, $password, $attr);

Establish a secure https connection to the specified UltraDNS host and port, and login using the specified $sponsor, $username, $password.

Returns an UltraDNS object. Throws an exception on error.

The optional $attr parameter is a reference to a hash of attributes:

trace

Specifies the integer trace (debug) level. 0 for none, 1 for basic tracing, and 2 and above for more detailed, and more verbose, tracing. Trace messages are output via warn.

ssl_trace

Sets $Net::SSLeay::trace. 0=no warns, 1=only errors, 2=ciphers, 3=progress, 4=dump data. See Net::SSLeay for more information.

version

Specifies the protocol version argument value used in the UDNS_OpenConnection request.

See UltraDNS::Methods for a list of the UltraDNS Transaction Protocol methods you can call once a connection is established.

commit

$udns->commit;

Submits the queued requests. An exception is thown on error.

rollback

$udns->rollback;

Discards the queued requests.

do

$result = $udns->do( $udns->SomeMethodThatReturnsAResult(...) );

A convienience method that calls commit() and returns the de-referenced argument. The one-line call has the same effect as these three lines:

$result_ref = $udns->SomeMethodThatReturnsAResult(...);
$udns->commit;
$result = $$result_ref; # de-reference to get return value

but is much more convienient when you just want to get a value from the server.

Multiple calls can be combined into a single request like this:

my ($a, $b, $c) = $udns->do(
    $udns->MethodReturningA(...),
    $udns->MethodReturningB(...),
    $udns->MethodReturningC(...)
);

eval

Just like the "do" method except any exception will be caught. This is useful for cases where an error is expected, such as deleting a record in the server that may not exist.

XXX currently it catches all exceptions, it's expected that in future it will only catch exceptions due to server-reported error.

err

$err = $udns->err;

Returns the error code from the server for the last transaction, else 0.

errstr

$errstr = $udns->errstr;

Returns the error message from the server for the last transaction, else an empty string.

trace

$udns->trace($level);
$prev = $udns->trace($level);
$prev = $udns->trace;

Sets the new trace level, if a value is supplied. 0 = off, 1 = basic overview, 2+ = more details. Returns the previous level.

LIMITATIONS

Transaction Size

A transaction can only contain 10 requests by default because the UltraDNS module calls UDNS_NoAutoCommit on connection, to ensure reliability, and NeuStar impose the 10 requests per transaction limit. This shouldn't be a problem in practice because transactions are cheap (since they reuse the same connection) so you can issue your requests grouped into multiple transactions.

Encoding

The NeuStar UltraDNS documentation never mentions character encoding. So, for better or worse, we don't explicitly use any either. That ought to mean UTF-8 encoding, but I've not tried to test what UltraDNS does on the server side. The underlying RPC::XML code (as of version 0.64) uses "us-ascii" but doesn't perform entity encoding. Overall it seems likely that non-ASCII values might get mangled.

Boolean

NeuStar have dug a hole for themselves and their users with the handling of the boolean type. At the start of the docs it says:

Boolean (0-false, 1-true)

and, indeed, that all what their examples use. All, that is, except the "Zone ACL Requests" methods. For those the docs say:

Note: Specify Boolean values as either True or False.

Clearly something's wrong! Currently I'm taking the view that those methods should be changed to use a standard boolean, or a new UltraDNS specific type. So, for now, you're out of luck if you want to call those methods, unless you want to do a little hacking to get the UltraDNS code to treat the args to those methods as strings.

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-ultradns@rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org.

AUTHOR

Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce@pobox.com>

LICENCE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2009, TigerLead.com. All rights reserved.

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See perlartistic.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Randy J Ray for RPC::XML, and Tatsuhiko Miyagawa for RPC::XML::Parser::LibXML (on which UltraDNS::Parser is based).

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

BECAUSE THIS SOFTWARE IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE SOFTWARE, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE SOFTWARE "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE SOFTWARE PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR, OR CORRECTION.

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