NEW FEATURE: Added "push --report" flag which generates JSON report of changes made

[fritterhoff]

We want to execute some actions after running dnscontrol. To reduce the amount of actions and improve the speed this PR adds a report option that generates a JSON file containing the Domain, the amount of performed actions and the Provider/Registrar.

Afterwards we can parse the json and identify the domains that were changed and ignore those that kept unchanged.

[cafferata]

Interesting! How do you use this in the PR context? Maybe you can describe this new option including the possibilities/examples repots in the documentation? I am curious because I see possible improvements for our current working method.

[fritterhoff]

In detail we extended dnscontrol a little bit further (https://github.com/hm-edu/dnscontrol-extended).

We generate reverse zones using dnscontrol and parse them afterwards into GitLab Issues. This allows us to identify free ip addresses and get a quick overview over the utilization of our IP ranges. In the next step we plan/are discussing to push the data into netbox. In a long term view the DNS data shal be the single source of truth for several management operations.

The GitLab issues are currently always created - regardless of whether a change is necessary or not. This is at the expense of the API limitations or, in the case of the large number of IP ranges, at the expense of performance.

[fritterhoff]

As an example this is an excerpt of the GitLab Issue for one /24 Zone.

In total we have more than 30 public /24 zones that get managed by dnscontrol and approx. 15 /16 internal zones. Overall we currently manage approx. 1500 public A Records and thousands of private A Records ;-)

[cafferata]

Thanks again for sharing! 👏 I like this kind of overview/deeper understanding of the needs. This inspires me, and perhaps others, as well.

PS. Did you also see @tlimoncelli 'endorsements' request on Google Group? Sounds like the Munich University of Applied Sciences is a great example. 😄

[fritterhoff]

@cafferata @tlimoncelli feel free to add the Munich University of Applied Sciences to your list of happy users 😉

[tlimoncelli]

Great idea!

Could you add documentation (https://docs.dnscontrol.org/developer-info/styleguide-doc#how-to-add-a-new-page) for this feature? (Please include a sample of what the json output looks like)

Tom

[fritterhoff]

I will add some docs and an example.

[tlimoncelli]

Thanks! I look forward to using this feature!