Managing Names

Transferring a Name

Each name in PNS has an owner. This account or contract is the only one that may make changes to the name in the PNS registry. The owner of a name can transfer ownership to any other account.

pnsjs

await pns.name('alice.pls').setOwner('0x1234...');

go-pns

Creating Subdomains

The owner of any domain can configure subdomains as desired. This is achieved by creating a subdomain and setting its owner to the desired address - this can be the same as the owner of the parent domain, or any other address.

pnsjs

await pns.name('alice.pls').createSubdomain('iam');

go-pns

Setting a Resolver

Before a newly created domain or subdomain can be used, a resolver address must be set. You may also want to do this if an updated resolver implementation is available that supports features that you want to make use of.

Most commonly, names are set to use a 'standard' resolver called the public resolver, which provides commonly-used functionality, but anyone may write and deploy their own special-purpose resolver; see the resolver interface definition for details.

pnsjs

await pns.name('iam.alice.pls').setResolver('0x1234');

On mainnet and the testnet (v3) network, 'resolver.pls' is configured to point to the latest deployed version of the public resolver, making it possible to easily configure a name to use the public resolver:

const resolver = await pns.resolver('resolver.pls').addr();
await pns.setResolver('iam.alice.pls', resolver, {from: ...});

go-pns

Note that changing the resolver for a name will not automatically migrate records from the old resolver over; to do this you will need to follow the process outlined below for updating records.

Updating Records

To change the resources an address resolves to, it's necessary to update that name's records in its resolver.

Each resolver may specify its own mechanism for updating records, but a standard method is implemented by the public resolver and many others. Some libraries provide functionality for updating a resolver's records using this interface.

Updating the Address Record

pnsjs

await pns.name('iam.alice.pls').setAddr('PLS', '0x1234...');

go-pns

Updating Other Records

Some libraries - presently only pns-sdk and go-ens - support updating other record types, such as content hashes and text records, using the same pattern. For example, to set or update a text record:

pnsjs

pns.name('iam.alice.pls').setText('test', 'Test record');

go-pns

Updating multiple records in one transaction

Public Resolver has multicall that permits users to set multiple records in a single operation. Read PublicResolver section for more detail.

Configuring Reverse Resolution

While 'regular' resolution involves mapping from a name to an address, reverse resolution maps from an address back to a name - or other metadata. PNS supports reverse resolution to allow applications to display PNS names in place of hexadecimal addresses.

Before this can be done, the owner of the address has to configure reverse resolution for their address. This is done by calling the claim() method on the reverse resolver, found at the special name 'addr.reverse'.

Most commonly this is accomplished via a user-interface such as the PNS Manager DApp. go-ens also provide functionality for this:

go-pns

reverseRegistrar, err := pns.NewReverseRegistrar(client)
// opts are go-ethereum's bind.TransactOpts
err := reverseRegistrar.SetName(opts, "iam.alice.pls")