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Middleware

Writing Middleware

From the Caddy docs:

Oh yes, those pesky return values on ServeHTTP(). You read the documentation so you already know what they mean. But what does that imply for the behavior of your middleware?

Basically, return a status code only if you did NOT write to the response body. If you DO write to the response body, return a status code of 0. Return an error value if your middleware encountered an error that you want logged. It is common to return an error status and an error value together, so that the error handler up the chain can write the correct error page.

The returned status code is not logged directly; rather, it tells middleware higher up the chain what status code to use if/when the response body is written. Again, return a 0 status if you've already written a body!

In the DNS status codes are called rcodes and it's slightly harder to return the correct answer in case of failure.

So CoreDNS treats:

  • SERVFAIL (dns.RcodeServerFailure)
  • REFUSED (dns.RcodeRefused)
  • FORMERR (dns.RcodeFormatError)
  • NOTIMP (dns.RcodeNotImplemented)

as special and will then assume nothing has written to the client. In all other cases it is assumes something has been written to the client (by the middleware).

Hooking It Up

See a couple of blog posts on how to write and add middleware to CoreDNS:

Metrics

When exporting metrics the Namespace should be middleware.Namespace (="coredns"), and the Subsystem should be the name of the middleware. The README.md for the middleware should then also contain a Metrics section detailing the metrics. If the middleware supports dynamic health reporting it should also have Health section detailing on its inner workings.

Documentation

Each middleware should have a README.md explaining what the middleware does and how it is configured. The file should have the following layout:

  • Title: use the middleware's name
  • Subsection titled: "Syntax"
  • Subsection titled: "Examples"

More sections are of course possible.

Style

We use the Unix manual page style:

  • The name of middleware in the running text should be italic: middleware.
  • all CAPITAL: user supplied argument, in the running text references this use strong text: **: EXAMPLE.
  • Optional text: in block quotes: [optional].
  • Use three dots to indicate multiple options are allowed: arg....
  • Item used literal: literal.

Example Domain Names

Please be sure to use example.org or example.net in any examples you provide. These are the standard domain names created for this purpose.

Fallthrough

In a perfect world the following would be true for middleware: "Either you are responsible for a zone or not". If the answer is "not", the middleware should call the next middleware in the chain. If "yes" it should handle all names that fall in this zone and the names below - i.e. it should handle the entire domain.

. {
    file example.org db.example
}

In this example the file middleware is handling all names below (and including) example.org. If a query comes in that is not a subdomain (or equal to) example.org the next middleware is called.

Now, the world isn't perfect, and there are good reasons to "fallthrough" to the next middlware, meaning a middleware is only responsible for a subset of names within the zone. The first of these to appear was the reverse middleware that synthesis PTR and A/AAAA responses (useful with IPv6).

The nature of the reverse middleware is such that it only deals with A,AAAA and PTR and then only for a subset of the names. Ideally you would want to layer reverse in front off another middleware such as file or auto (or even proxy). This means reverse handles some special reverse cases and all other request are handled by the backing middleware. This is exactly what "fallthrough" does. To keep things explicit we've opted that middlewares implement such behavior should implement a fallthrough keyword.

Example Fallthrough Usage

The following Corefile example, sets up the reverse middleware, but disables fallthrough. It also defines a zonefile for use with the file middleware for other names in the compute.internal.

arpa compute.internal {
    reverse 10.32.0.0/16 {
        hostname ip-{ip}.{zone[2]}
        #fallthrough
    }
    file db.compute.internal compute.internal
}

This works for returning a response to a PTR request:

% dig +nocmd @localhost +noall +ans -x 10.32.0.1
1.0.32.10.in-addr.arpa.	3600	IN	PTR	ip-10-32-0-1.compute.internal.

And for the forward:

% dig +nocmd @localhost +noall +ans A ip-10-32-0-1.compute.internal
ip-10-32-0-1.compute.internal. 3600 IN	A	10.32.0.1

But a query for mx compute.internal will return SERVFAIL. Now when we remove the '#' from fallthrough and reload (on Unix: kill -SIGUSR1 $(pidof coredns)) CoreDNS, we should get an answer for the MX query:

% dig +nocmd @localhost +noall +ans MX compute.internal
compute.internal.	3600	IN	MX	10 mx.compute.internal.

Qualifying for main repo

Middleware for CoreDNS can live out-of-tree, middleware.cfg defaults to CoreDNS' repo but other repos work just as well. So when do we consider the inclusion of a new middleware in the main repo?

  • First, the middleware should be useful for other people. "Useful" is a subjective term. We will probably need to further refine this.
  • It should be sufficiently different from other middleware to warrant inclusion.
  • Current internet standards need be supported: IPv4 and IPv6, so A and AAAA records should be handled (if your middleware is in the business of dealing with address records that is).
  • It must have tests.
  • It must have a README.md for documentation.