URLFWD being replaced with REDIRECT

[ross]

IBM NS1 Connect
Action required:
Convert your URLFWD records
to REDIRECT records.

You are receiving this email because your IBM NS1 Connect account has at least one URLFWD record configured, and this functionality is being deprecated on September 30, 2024. URL forwarding (URLFWD) records are being replaced by the new URL redirect (REDIRECT) record types. For details, refer to the product announcement and technical documentation.

Please take immediate action to migrate URLFWD records into URL redirect configurations. Refer to the following instructions:

[Create a redirect configuration](https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ns1-connect?topic=redirects-configuring-url-redirect) corresponding to the URLFWD record details.
Verify the redirect configuration settings. A new REDIRECT record will appear in the corresponding zone.
Delete the URLFWD record. Note: DNS responses will cut over to the new redirect after the TTL on the URLFWD record expires
Repeat this process for all URLFWD records in your account.

The NS1 Connect support team is here to help with this process as well. Our support team can access a list of all URLFWDs in your account (if you need help finding them). They also have a migration script that has been developed and tested by our engineering team to perform Step 1 of the above process for ALL URLFWDs in your account. If you would like the support team to run this script on your account, please open a support case.

If we do not hear from you before September 30, 2024, NS1 engineers will perform the migration of URLFWDs to URL Redirects in your account on your behalf.

[brianeclow]

Unfortunately, when this was added to octoDNS it was a single repo. This means the octodns-cloudflare also is using URLFWD for the redirect services there.

[ross]

Unfortunately, when this was added to octoDNS it was a single repo. This means the octodns-cloudflare also is using URLFWD for the redirect services there.

Has Cloudflare announced a similar deprecation? The octoDNS record type will hopefully be able to remain URLFWD and it'll "just" be a change to the record type created when things are pushed up to NS1. That does assume the two types are compatible.

[brianeclow]

Cloudflare was planning to deprecate the specific Rules -> Page Rules called Forwarding URL, and move it to a new location. However, they have paused those plans.

I was thinking completeness when I made my comment. However, just updating what gets pushed/pulled from NS1 sounds like the quickest win.

[ross]

Apparently the "REDIRECT" records aren't actually a new record type, they're a completely separate object so this isn't going to be a drop in replacement.

What's more they're not tied to a/per zone it's just a list of them so there's not a simple way to figure out what belongs in a zone during populate. I.e. if we see something.foo.bar.ns1.com. and we're being asked to populate ns1.com. at the moment we need to make sure that none of the sub-zones are (separately) managed as they would own it and not us.

There's also a bunch of other details around support for https and forcing https.

Anyway. I would classify this as a small project to support rather than something I can just sit down for an hour and churn out which is to say not sure when I'll get to it.

[ross]

Also by way of a note, if this is going to be something octoDNS transparently handles there will need to be some mechanics around an upgrade process that converts the URLFWD to its corresponding redirect and deletes the old URLFWD. That would be a change that couldn't be undone and thus users would not be able to downgrade octodns-ns1 afterwards.

[ross]

A bit more digging/realization. A single URLFWD can turn into multiple redirect configs: (ignore the errors. I told it to enable HTTPS which failed since it's a dummy domain and I can't undo it.)

This will require further matching/understanding of the "Source URL" when trying to associate redirects to their owning domains.

Something like this previously would have been a single URLFWD with multiple values:

That has always been in my ~test setup for NS1 to do URLFWDs.

[ross]

WIP/investigation branch can be found here https://github.com/octodns/octodns-ns1/compare/redirect?expand=1

Definitely a project. TBH more than I'm likely to pick up outside of someone funding it as there are lots of details and edge cases.

[ross]

Plan otherwise will be to remove support for URLFWD if/when NS1 removes it from their system assuming the work hasn't happened by then.

I can see why Cloudflare changed their minds/delayed 😁

[asinha3-chwy]

Is the work regarding this still in progress? NS1 will deprecate URLFWD by the end of this month.

[brianeclow]

I started looking at this using your branch as a starting point.
This line throws the runtime error AttributeError: 'Ns1Provider' object has no attribute '_find_redirects'. Ignoring that missing function, I am having trouble getting as far as you did.

Are there missed commits not pushed to the working branch?

[ross]

Are there missed commits not pushed to the working branch?

Naw. It was a WIP halfway through some changes/thinking/experimentation. As mentioned above I think it'll be a decent chunk of work to get it all going and working correctly, especially in a. backwards compatible way. Something that could be done/I could do, but more than I'll have time to sit down and do absent someone footing the bill. Will definitely review PRs. It'll like require a pretty deep understanding of things to get plumbed out.

[brianeclow]

That's fair. I have a fall back, which I don't want to use, if we can't get this updated soon.
Interestingly enough, the error went away when I imported a test redirect. 🤷 . 🤦 because the code doesn't get that fair. 😅