Recently, I was working on a project that involved creating some CNAME records for a domain I registered through Cloudflare. This triggered the thought of automating this action through ServiceNow. It would give me a place to store and track my zones, their details, and the entries attached to them. I searched the store and came up empty but didn't stop there. Why do a 30-second job when you could just spend hours automating it so you never have to think about it again, right? Well, that’s what I did.
I spent some time reviewing the Cloudflare API docs. I came up with a few use cases and also solved my own problems. Once the application was created, flows/actions made, and a few tables populated, Cloudflare Manager v1.0 was complete. Now, instead of going through the trouble of logging into the dashboard, finding my domain, and creating the record, I just have a simple record producer that initiates a flow when submitted and approved.
What does it do?
In its current state, the application will do the following:
- Import Zones and entries
- Create entries
The import is a simple daily pull; the entry creation will take the information from the record producer record, contact Cloudflare, and generate the entry with a comment attached that references the original request record.
All things considered, it’s a pretty solid application. In the end, it solved my first-world problem and has the potential to be expanded way past its current state. My big takeaway from the time I spent on this small project was this:
No matter the scale of the problem that we (as engineers) are solving, there will be a level of knowledge gained. This is a cyclical process with great returns. As long as we give in to our thirst for knowledge, we will continue to grow and find new ways to solve problems.
Here are a few examples of screenshots from Cloudflare Manager:
What’s in store for the future of this project?
For the short term, I’m working on an extension of this application to enable automatic deployment of a zone entry in parallel with docker container deployment through portainer (this will also integrate with Traefik for reverse proxy). Keep an eye on the repo for this update.
The long-term goal is to extend this application to allow the creation of page rules, nameserver changes, email routing rules, and Cloudflare tunnels.
Here is a link to v1.0 on our current open-source repo: Cloudflare Manager
Interested to learn more? Write to our experts at chat@rapdev.io
