Previous section: Rackspace Cloud DNS - Technical details

This article shows a simple example using the Application Programmer Interface (API).

Every ReST request against the DNS Service requires the inclusion of a specific authorization token supplied by the X-Auth-Token HTTP header. You can obtain this token by first using the Rackspace Cloud Authentication Service and supplying a valid Rackspace Cloud account username and API access key.

Authentication request

curl -D - -H "X-Auth-Key: a86850deb2742ec3cb41518e26aa2d89" -H "X-Auth-User: jdoe" https://auth.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0

Authentication response

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
(... more ...)
X-Auth-Token: eaaafd18-0fed-4b3a-81b4-663c99ec1cbb

After authentication, you can send requests to an available API endpoint. Our DNS service is regionalized, and DNS is therefore responsible for appropriate replication, caching, and overall DNS data maintenance across regional boundaries to other DNS servers. We have endpoints available in the US and the UK.

• US https://dns.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/1234

• UK https://ion.dns.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/1234

List domain details

Next, consider this simple call to the API. This example shows a List domain details request. The request calls the US endpoint at dns.api.rackspacecloud.com and requests the domains for account number 1234 and the domain ID 2725511.

curl -X GET -H "X-Auth-Token:eaaafd18-0fed-4b3a-81b4-663c99ec1cbb" -H "Accept:application/xml" https://dns.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/1234/domains/2725511

Following is an example XML response from the List domains API call, but the DNS API supports both the JSON and XML data serialization formats. You specify the response format in requests by using either the Accept Header or adding a .xml or .json extension to the request URI. If you specify no response format, the system uses JSON by default. If you have conflicting formats by using both an Accept Header and a query extension, the query extension takes precedence.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<domain xmlns="https://docs.rackspacecloud.com/dns/api/v1.0"
    id="2725511" accountId="1234" name="rtb0007.com" ttl="3600" emailAddress="sample@rackspace.com" updated="2011-06-24T01:23:15Z" created="2011-06-24T01:12:51Z" comment="Optional domain comment...">
    <nameservers>
        <nameservername="ns.rackspace.com" />
        <nameservername="ns1.rackspace.com" />
    </nameservers>
    <recordsListtotalEntries="5">
        <record id="A-6822994" type="A" name="rtb0007.com" data="110.11.12.16"  ttl="86400" updated="2011-06-24T01:12:52Z" created="2011-06-24T01:12:52Z" />
        <record id="NS-6251982" type="NS" name="rtb0007.com" data="ns.rackspace.com" ttl="3600" updated="2011-06-24T01:12:51Z"  created="2011-06-24T01:12:51Z" />
        <record id="NS-6251983" type="NS" name="rtb0007.com" data="ns2.rackspace.com" ttl="3600" updated="2011-06-24T01:12:51Z"  created="2011-06-24T01:12:51Z" />
        <record id="MX-3151218" type="MX" name="rtb0007.com"  data="mail2.rtb0007.com" ttl="3600" priority="5" updated="2011-06-24T01:12:53Z" created="2011-06-24T01:12:53Z" />
        <record id="CNAME-9778009" type="CNAME" name="www.rtb0007.com"  data="rtb0007.com" ttl="5400" updated="2011-06-24T01:12:54Z"       created="2011-06-24T01:12:54Z" />
    </recordsList>
</domain>

Next steps: Rackspace Cloud DNS - Additional resources