Twisted Names

Twisted Names is both a domain name server as well as a client resolver library. Twisted Names comes with an "out of the box" nameserver which can read most BIND-syntax zone files as well as a simple Python-based configuration format. Twisted Names can act as an authoritative server, perform zone transfers from a master to act as a secondary, act as a caching nameserver, or any combination of these. Twisted Names' client resolver library provides functions to query for all commonly used record types as well as a replacement for the blocking gethostbyname() function provided by the Python stdlib socket module.

Examples

Running a caching DNS server is as easy as running twistd. See twistd dns --help for more details

$ twistd -n dns --port 5354 --recursive --cache

This is how you can do some name resolution with Twisted Names.

$ python -m twisted.conch.stdio
>>> from twisted.names import client
>>> client.getHostByName('twistedmatrix.com')
<Deferred at 0x9dcfbac current result: '66.35.39.65'>
>>> client.lookupMailExchange('twistedmatrix.com')
<Deferred at 0x90eb0ec current result: ([<RR name=twistedmatrix.com type=MX class=IN ttl=86303s auth=False>], [], [<RR name=mail.twistedmatrix.com type=A class=IN ttl=86304s auth=False>])>

Twisted has pluggable resolvers, the default resolver reads /etc/resolv.conf (Or C:\windows\system\hosts.txt on windows), /etc/hosts and has a cache. You can create an alternate resolver to resolve names. Such as in the following example.

$ python -m twisted.conch.stdio
>>> from twisted.names import client
>>> resolver = client.createResolver(servers=['8.8.8.8', '8.8.4.4'], hosts='alternate_hosts_file')
>>> resolver.getHostByName('twistedmatrix.com')
<Deferred at 0x9dcfbac current result: '1.2.3.4'>

You can affect all future name resolution in the reactor and from the twisted.names.client by installing a custom resolver into the reactor.

from twisted.internet import reactor
from twisted.names import client
reactor.installResolver(client.createResolver(servers=['8.8.8.8', '8.8.4.4'], hosts='alternate_hosts_file'))

Download

See the Downloads page.

Documentation

​Documentation is available for Twisted Names. An ​API reference of Twisted and all subprojects is also available.

Contact

Subscribe to the ​twisted-python mailing list or visit the #twisted channel on irc.freenode.net to ask questions.

​Report a bug or ​request a feature using the issue tracker (registration required), or browse Twisted Names tickets.