Group management
Group management¶
Any blocklist or domain on the white-/black-/regex-lists can be managed through groups. This allows not only grouping them to highlight their relationship, but also enabling/disabling them together if one, for instance, wants to visit a specific service only temporarily.
Groups are defined in the group table and can have an optional description in addition to the mandatory name of the group.
| Label | Type | Uniqueness enforced | Content |
|---|---|---|---|
id |
integer | Yes | Unique ID for database operations |
enabled |
boolean | No | Flag whether domains in this group should be used ( 0 = disabled, 1 = enabled) |
name |
text | No | Mandatory group name |
comment |
text | No | Optional field for arbitrary user comments |
Group management is implemented using so-called linking tables. Hence, it is possible to
- associate domains (and clients!) with any number of groups,
- manage adlists together with groups,
- use the same groups for black- and whitelisted domains at the same time.
The linking tables are particularly simple, as they only link group ids with list ids. As an example, we describe the domainlist_by_group table. The adlist and client linking tables are constructed similarly.
| Label | Type | Content |
|---|---|---|
domainlist_id |
integer | id of domain in the domainlist table |
group_id |
integer | id of associated group in the group table |
Group Default (group_id 0) is special as it is automatically assigned to domains and clients not being a member of other groups. Each newly added client or domain gets assigned to group zero when being added.
Effect of group management¶
The great flexibility to manage domains in no, one, or multiple groups may result in unexpected behavior when, e.g., the domains are enabled in some but disabled in other groups. For the sake of convenience, we describe the possible configurations and whether FTLDNS uses these domains (✔) or not (✘) in such cases.
-
Domain disabled: ✘
Note that the domain is never imported by FTLDNS, even if it is contained in an enabled group. -
Domain enabled: It depends...
- Not managed by a group: ✔
- Contained in one or more groups (at least one enabled): ✔
- Contained in one or more groups (all disabled): ✘