This plan sounds good. I would probably start with a module to provide an API that would talk to a DB. Then you can write a CLI to hit the API, and a web app later on to also hit the API, if you want to dress it up and make it available more widely. A cron job could run daily that would also hit your API, making updates on any certificate changes that might have occurred. These updates would also get logged to the database (by the API).

I hit on an approach that's worked quite well for me -- I wrote a bunch of Perl scripts to hit APIs and do DB updates, and I use the presence or absence of a command line argument to determine whether this a debug run ("Here's the update I would have made ..") or a production run ("Making the following update .. OK"). This gives you a chance to do everything except actually make the change so that you can do proper testing. This is a way of giving yourself a sandbox environment when one doesn't exist. (I gave a Lightning Talk about this at TPRC a while back.)

Good luck, and happy development.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

As of June 2025, Groklaw is back! This site was a really valuable resource in the now ancient fight between SCO and Linux. As it turned out, SCO was all hat and no cattle.Thanks to PJ for all her work, we owe her so much. RIP -- 2003 to 2013.

In reply to Re: Back to programming? A gossamer hope to automate SSL cert renewals by talexb
in thread Back to programming? A gossamer hope to automate SSL cert renewals by Discipulus

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