Hornet

Hornet is a fast, comprehensive Rust library for parsing, writing, and validating BIND9 named.conf configuration files and DNS zone files.

Project Status

Technology

Security

Community

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What is Hornet?

Hornet gives Rust applications a complete toolkit for working with BIND9 configuration. It parses config files and zone files into strongly-typed ASTs, serialises them back to valid text with configurable formatting, and runs semantic validation to catch common mistakes before they reach a live DNS server.

Key Features

Capability	Details
Parse named.conf	options, zone, view, acl, logging, controls, key, primaries, server
Parse zone files	A, AAAA, NS, MX, SOA, CNAME, PTR, TXT, SRV, CAA, SSHFP, TLSA, NAPTR, DS, DNSKEY, RRSIG, NSEC, HTTPS/SVCB, and unknown types
Write / format	Round-trip serialisation with configurable indentation and keyword normalisation
Validate	Semantic checks: undefined ACLs, duplicate zones, missing SOA/NS, CIDR correctness, and more
CLI tool	parse, zone, check, check-zone, fmt, convert subcommands
Rich error reporting	Precise diagnostics via miette with source spans
Modern keyword aliases	Automatically rewrite master → primary, slave → secondary
Serde support	Optional serde feature flag adds Serialize/Deserialize to all AST types

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Quick Example

Parse a named.conf

use hornet_bind9::parse_named_conf;

let input = r#"
options {
    directory "/var/cache/bind";
    recursion yes;
    allow-query { any; };
};

zone "example.com" {
    type primary;
    file "/etc/bind/zones/example.com.db";
};
"#;

let conf = parse_named_conf(input)?;
println!("{} statement(s)", conf.statements.len()); // 2

Validate a config

use hornet_bind9::{parse_named_conf, validate_named_conf, Severity};

let conf = parse_named_conf(input)?;
for diag in validate_named_conf(&conf) {
    match diag.severity {
        Severity::Error   => eprintln!("error: {}", diag.message),
        Severity::Warning => eprintln!("warn:  {}", diag.message),
        Severity::Info    => println! ("info:  {}", diag.message),
    }
}

Use the CLI

# Validate a config file (exits 1 on errors/warnings)
hornet check /etc/bind/named.conf

# Reformat in-place
hornet fmt /etc/bind/named.conf

# Migrate legacy keywords (master → primary)
hornet convert --in-place /etc/bind/named.conf

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Who Should Use Hornet?

Hornet is designed for:

• DNS automation tools that need to read, modify, and write BIND9 config
• Configuration linters and CI pipelines that validate DNS files before deployment
• Migration tools converting legacy BIND8 configs to modern BIND9 syntax
• Monitoring agents that parse running BIND9 configs for observability
• Testing frameworks that generate and assert on BIND9 configurations programmatically

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Project Status

Hornet is actively developed. It supports the full breadth of named.conf statement types and 24+ DNS record types. The library API is stabilising toward a 1.0 release.

Current version: v0.1.0

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Next Steps

• Quick Start — Install and use hornet in five minutes
• Concepts — Understand the AST and processing pipeline
• User Guide — Detailed guides for parsing, writing, and validation
• CLI Reference — Full hornet CLI documentation
• Reference — Complete named.conf constructs and record types

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License

Hornet is licensed under the MIT License.