Beta Testing the Slicehost API

A Foray into ActiveResource and DNS Records

2008-03-21

I was fortunate enough to join slicehost this past week. It is a fantastic service, possibly the best VPS I've encountered. While perusing their forum as I am want to do from time to time, I noticed a new post by a slicehost employee requesting beta-testers (a favorite phrase of mine) for their new API. I've used ActiveResource in the past and I thought it would be worth a shot.

I threw in my hat on the forum and was summarily rewarded with an email from a slicehost employee. I was given an API key and some documentation with examples in Ruby and Python. Given my ActiveResource experience I immediately went to work with their example. It was a breeze and one that I am delighted to say any Rubyist would be able to complete.

I completed the example, messed around a bit more, and then I retired for the evening. The next day I received a short questionnaire which I dutifully filled out and returned. My tinkering was not over, however. Oh, no. The next free chance I had, I dove right in. Given the access the beta provided I could create only two things off the top of my head. The first, a dynamic-dns-type updater. The second, a monitor of system status.

So far, I have only completed the dynamic dns updater. It is crude but, it provides the basic functionality required. It allows you to provide a Zone and a Record, as well as, the IP address to use when updating the record. If you do not provide an IP address, the current external IP of your location will be used.

The point of all this is I can have a domain name pointing to my home IP. If my provider changes my IP for whatever reason, the script, run by cron on a regular basis will tell slicehost, my DNS provider, that my home IP address has changed within a reasonable amount of time.