lexicon(1)

💖 NAME 💖

lexicon — programmatically manipulate DNS records ✨

(also, heads up, this is a section 1 page, the User Commands one, so you already know it's a command you actually run in your terminal 👑)

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay bestie, first thing's first, and I need you to sit down for this: the page literally says, and I am quoting here, "This manual documents the tldextract command."

Yes. It says tldextract. Not me, not my fault, I'm just the messenger 💀

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

usage: lexicon [-h] [--version] [--delegated DELEGATED] PROVIDER

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -h, --help — shows this help message and then dips, iconic behaviour 💅
• --version — shows you the current version of lexicon. vibe check, version edition ⭐
• --delegated DELEGATED — specify the delegated domain
• PROVIDER — this is the one where you say which domain provider you want to create, update, delete or list DNS entries for, and your options are exactly: {cloudflare, cloudxns, digitalocean, dnsimple, dnsmadeeasy, dnspark, dnspod, easydns, luadns, namesilo, nsone, pointhq, rage4, route53, vultr, yandex, zonomi} 🌈 pick your fighter, there are seventeen of them and they're all invited to the party

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🌸 PROVIDER USAGE 🌸

📜 SYNOPSIS 📜

lexicon PROVIDER [-h] [--name NAME] [--content CONTENT] [--ttl TTL]
[--priority PRIORITY] [--identifier IDENTIFIER] [--auth-username
AUTH_USERNAME] [--auth-token AUTH_TOKEN] ACTION DOMAIN TYPE

💜 OPTIONS 💜

• PROVIDER — same deal as before, bestie: this specifies the domain provider you want to create, update, delete or list DNS entries for, from {cloudflare, cloudxns, digitalocean, dnsimple, dnsmadeeasy, dnspark, dnspod, easydns, luadns, namesilo, nsone, pointhq, rage4, route53, vultr, yandex, zonomi}. yes, the whole list again, they really wanted you to know 🫶
• ACTION — specify the action to take, from {create, list, update, delete}
• DOMAIN — specify the domain to use, and yes it supports subdomains as well, she's flexible like that 💖
• TYPE — specify the entry type, from {A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS, SPF, SOA, TXT, SRV, LOC}
• -h, --help — print the provider-specific help message and exit (so, per-provider help, not the generic one, k? 🎀)
• --name NAME — specify the record name
• --content CONTENT — specify the record content
• --ttl TTL — specify the record time-to-live
• --priority PRIORITY — specify the record priority
• --identifier IDENTIFIER — specify the record for update or delete actions
• --auth-username AUTH_USERNAME — specify email address used to authenticate
• --auth-token AUTH_TOKEN — specify token used authenticate

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

setup provider environmental variables:

LEXICON_CLOUDFLARE_USERNAME="myusername@example.com"
LEXICON_CLOUDFLARE_TOKEN="cloudflare-api-token"

list all TXT records on cloudflare

lexicon cloudflare list example.com TXT

create a new TXT record on cloudflare

lexicon cloudflare create www.example.com TXT
--name="_acme-challenge.www.example.com." --content="challenge
token"

delete a TXT record on cloudflare

lexicon cloudflare delete www.example.com TXT
--name="_acme-challenge.www.example.com." --content="challenge
token"

lexicon cloudflare delete www.example.com TXT
--identifier="cloudflare record id"

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🔐 AUTHENTICATION 🔐

So most supported DNS services hand out an API token, but ngl every single service implements authentication its own way 🙈. Lexicon tries to standardize auth around these CLI flags:

• --auth-username — for DNS services that require it, this is usually the account id or email address
• --auth-password — for DNS services that do not provide an API token, this is usually the account password
• --auth-token — this is the most common auth method, the API token provided by the DNS service

You can see all the --auth-* flags for a specific service by reading the DNS-service-specific help:

lexicon cloudflare -h

Instead of providing authentication info via the CLI, you can also specify it via environmental variables ✨ Every DNS service and auth flag maps to an environmental variable like this:

LEXICON_{DNS Provider Name}_{Auth Type}

So instead of specifying --auth-username and --auth-token flags when calling the cli, you could instead set the LEXICON_CLOUDFLARE_USERNAME and LEXICON_CLOUDFLARE_TOKEN environmental variables. same energy, less typing, we love that for you 🫶

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🧚 LETSENCRYPT INSTRUCTIONS 🧚

Lexicon has an example dehydrated hook file at examples/dehydrated.default.sh that you can use for any supported provider. All you need to do is set the PROVIDER env variable.

PROVIDER=cloudflare dehydrated --cron --hook
dehydrated.default.sh --challenge dns-01

Lexicon can also be used with Certbot (https://certbot.eff.org/) and the included Certbot hook file examples/certbot.default.sh — note that this one requires configuration ⚠️

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

For more information about lexicon see https://github.com/dns-lexicon/dns-lexicon. This manpage was created by Ana Custura for the Debian project 💜

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okay that's the whole thing, you're officially certified in lexicon now, no cap 👑

mwah, this was lexicon, dated February 2018 — catch you in the next section 1 page, bestie 💋🎀