Domains

Domain Modules provide infrastructure and configuration to launch and maintain domains through Nullstone. These modules enable developer self-service of subdomains and dynamic creation of URLs through environments.

Nullstone manages the registration of domains through the Nullstone UI. The Nullstone UI constructs Terraform workspaces for the necessary domains.

WARNING

If a developer has Architect access on the global stack, they have the ability to manage domains. Your organization should protect your domains by restricting Architect access to the global stack.

This guide discusses the practices and techniques used by Nullstone to construct DNS records.

Delegator

The official Nullstone modules delegate subdomains across AWS accounts. As an example, a subdomain like api.dev.acme.io is maintained in a dev AWS account.

To enable this delegation, the aws-domain module creates an AWS IAM user that has limited access to change its DNS zone. This delegator is passed to the aws-subdomain module to repoint the subdomain to a DNS zone in the dev AWS account.

Let's take an example using subdomain=api, env=dev, and domain=acme.io. In the dev AWS account, a new DNS zone named api.dev.acme.io is created. In the production AWS account, the delegator creates NS records with the nameservers from the dev DNS zone.

Dynamic URLs

The official Nullstone modules provide automatic subdomain generation. These modules create a unique DNS zone based on:

• domain name
• dns_name specified by the user
• the current environment
• var.create_vanity

Examples for domain acme.io:

dns_name	env	var.create_vanity	fqdn
api	dev	false	api.dev.acme.io
api	staging	false	api.staging.acme.io
api	prod	true	api.acme.io

Terraform Data Sources

ns_domain

The name of the domain registered in Nullstone is not normally accessible to the Terraform module. The ns_domain data source provides automatic discovery of the domain based on the current workspace.

If you create a module using nullstone modules generate, a new domain.tf is created for you to help. This produces the following content where local.domain_name is the registered domain name.

data "ns_domain" "this" {
  stack_id = data.ns_workspace.this.stack_id
  block_id = data.ns_workspace.this.block_id
}

locals {
  domain_name = data.ns_domain.this.dns_name
}