XML To Domain Mapper Web Service

By: Ted C. Howard on Sunday, April 10, 2011 at 9:29 PM

This all started with a post on Dave's blog Saturday. He was trying to see what it took to serve up an xml file from a domain. He was succesful, but he mentioned that what he really wanted was a web service that would do this. I spent some time thinking about the problem, and came up with a basic solution. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Basically we have a server, let's call it 'domain-mapper.com'. You will first need to configure your domain to point at the ip address of the domain mapper server. Then you need to tell the domain mapper server about your domain. You do this by posting to domain-mapper.com/domain and you give it 2 parameters: domainName and password. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Now that your domain points to the domain mapper server and the domain mapper server knows about your domain, it's time to save the file to the domain. You do this by posting to your domain name with one parameter called 'feed'. You will need to log in using http basic auth (the username is your domain name and your password is the one you provided when you registered your server). Permanent link to this item in the archive.

That's it. It's pretty simple huh? If you want to update your file, just post to your domain again. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

I'm not completely finished with the implementation. There are a few more features I want to put in, but once I do I'll put up a server so we can test it. I'll probably release the sourcecode for the server too. I just wanted to get this documented somewhere so that those that care can comment and provide some feedback on my deisgn. Permanent link to this item in the archive.