What

Let's say, for the sake of this short note, that you have:

• Cloudflare DNS which you use to expose your service to the world (or to your internal tailscale/VPN/home network)
• Caddy is your reverse proxy of choice
• Nomad is your deployment system of choice

Well, now, here is how I synchronize DNS records on Cloudflare based on the service discovery in Nomad / Consul using some shortcuts and a very small Python script...

Result of this process is that if I have a service with name "chronograf" my DNS record chronograf.mycooldomain.com gets updated.

How

First, the nomad job definition:

job "internal-proxy" {
  datacenters = ["DC1"]
  type        = "service"

  constraint {
    attribute = "${attr.unique.hostname}"
    value     = "pluto"
  }

  group "main" {
    ephemeral_disk {
      migrate = true
      size    = 150
      sticky  = true
    }

    task "caddy" {
        # define the Caddy task. not relevant for this short note, 
        #perhaps a nice topic for another one
    }

    task "syncer" {
      driver = "docker"

      config {
        image   = "python:3.10.4-slim-bullseye"
        volumes = [
          "local/:/etc/dns-sync"
        ]
        command = "python3"
        args    = ["/etc/dns-sync/syncer.py"]
      }

      env {
        ZONE_ID_FILE      = "/etc/dns-sync/cf_zone_id"
        CF_API_TOKEN_FILE = "/etc/dns-sync/cf_api_key"
        DNS_MAPPING_FILE  = "/etc/dns-sync/records.txt"
      }

      template {
        data        = <<EOF
[[ fileContents "syncer.py" ]]
EOF
        destination = "local/syncer.py"
      }

      template {
        data          = "{{ key \"cloudFlare/zoneId\" }}"
        destination   = "local/cf_zone_id"
        change_mode   = "signal"
        change_signal = "SIGUSR1"
      }

      template {
        data          = "{{ key \"cloudFlare/cfApi\" }}"
        destination   = "local/cf_api_key"
        change_mode   = "signal"
        change_signal = "SIGUSR1"
      }

      template {
        data          = <<EOF
{{range $tag, $services := services | byTag}}{{ if eq $tag "expose-internal" }}{{range $services}}{{ .Name }}.{{ key "cloudFlare/domain" }}|{{ with node "pluto" }}{{ .Node.Address }}{{ end }}
{{end}}{{end}}{{end}}
EOF
        destination   = "local/records.txt"
        change_mode   = "signal"
        change_signal = "SIGUSR1"
      }

      resources {
        cpu    = 100
        memory = 100
      }
    }
  }
}

Some assumptions I took in the job above:

• I am using Consul as key/value store and utilizing it to get the services I am interested in and I am using Consul Templating to get this going
• I only want to expose services that are tagged with expose-internal
• operationally, I "know" that this will be deployed only on a node with name pluto,
• my personal Cloudflare API token and the zone ID which I plan on syncing are stored in Consul K/V storage
• also, my domain under which I am exposing services is also in Consul K/V storage
• I construct files which are updated automatically by Consul when/if K/V settings change OR if a new service mapping becomes available

Now, the script that does the syncing Nomad -> Cloudflare using pure Python 3.

import argparse
import json
import logging
import os
import signal
import sys
import urllib.parse
import urllib.request
from typing import Dict, List, Optional


def read_secret_multi(secret_name_file: str) -> List[str]:
    with open(read_env_or_fail(secret_name_file), 'r') as env_file_file:
        return [x.strip() for x in env_file_file.readlines()]


def read_secret(secret_name_file: str) -> str:
    with open(read_env_or_fail(secret_name_file), 'r') as env_file_file:
        return env_file_file.readline()


def read_env_or_fail(secret_name_file):
    env_file = os.getenv(secret_name_file, None)
    if env_file is None:
        logging.error(f"Environment variable {secret_name_file} was not present, giving up")
        sys.exit(1)
    return env_file


class Syncer:
    def __init__(self, zone_id: str, cf_api_token: str, dns_records: List[str]):
        self.zone_id = zone_id
        self.cf_api_token = cf_api_token
        self.mappings = {x.split('|')[0]: x.split('|')[1] for x in dns_records if x}

    def cf_api(self, path: str, method: Optional[str] = 'GET', data: Optional[Dict] = None):
        req = urllib.request.Request(
            url=f'https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/{path}',
            headers={
                "Authorization": f"Bearer {self.cf_api_token}",
                "Content-Type": "application/json",
            },
            data=json.dumps(data).encode('utf-8') if data else None,
            method=method,
        )
        with urllib.request.urlopen(req) as f:
            return json.loads(f.read().decode('utf-8'))

    def sync(self):
        logging.info("Syncing records...")
        records = self.cf_api(f'zones/{self.zone_id}/dns_records')['result']
        cf_records = {rec['name']: rec for rec in records}
        for our_mapping, target in self.mappings.items():
            cf_mapping: Dict = cf_records.get(our_mapping, None)
            if cf_mapping:
                if cf_mapping['content'] == target and cf_mapping['type'] == 'A':
                    logging.info(f"Identical mapping on CF for: {our_mapping}, ignoring")
                else:
                    logging.info(f"Updating existing mapping on CF for: {our_mapping} -> {target}")
                    self.cf_api(path=f"zones/{self.zone_id}/dns_records/{cf_mapping['id']}", method='PATCH',
                                data=self.make_cf_record_dto(our_mapping, target))
            else:
                logging.info(f"Adding new mapping on CF for: {our_mapping} -> {target}")
                self.cf_api(path=f'zones/{self.zone_id}/dns_records', method='POST',
                            data=self.make_cf_record_dto(our_mapping, target))

    @staticmethod
    def make_cf_record_dto(our_mapping, target):
        return {
            "type": "A",
            "name": our_mapping,
            "content": target,
            "proxied": False
        }


def run():
    Syncer(
        zone_id=read_secret("ZONE_ID_FILE"),
        cf_api_token=read_secret("CF_API_TOKEN_FILE"),
        dns_records=read_secret_multi("DNS_MAPPING_FILE"),
    ).sync()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog='syncer.py', description="Automation script for Cloudflare record syncing")
    parser.add_argument('--debug', default=False, required=False, action='store_true', dest="debug",
                        help='debug flag')
    args = parser.parse_args()
    if args.debug:
        logging.getLogger().setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
    else:
        logging.getLogger().setLevel(logging.INFO)

    # initial run
    run()
    # subsequent run
    signal.signal(signal.SIGUSR1, lambda sig, frame: run())
    # exit gracefully
    signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, lambda sig, frame: sys.exit(0))
    signal.signal(signal.SIGTERM, lambda sig, frame: sys.exit(0))
    while True:
        logging.info('Waiting for signals...')
        signal.pause()