Text Record (TXT)

Provides the ability to associate some arbirary and unformatted text with a host or other name. The TXT record is used to define the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) (RFC 4408 and DomainKeys Signed Mail (DKIM) (RFC 4871 and RFC 5617) information records which may be used to validate legitimate email sources from a domain. In both the case of SPF and DKIM it is the application entity that defines and interprets the text format - as far as the DNS is concerned the records are simply text.

Format

name  ttl  class   rr     text
joe        IN      TXT    "Located in a black hole"

The text is enclosed in quotes. Multiple quoted strings may appear on a single line or parentheses may be used to contain them if they appear on multiple lines. In both cases the eclosed text (eliminating the quotes) is concatenated (joined) with no intervening characters added. Examples:

; multiple quotes strings on a single line
; generates a single text string of 
; Located in a black hole somewhere
joe        IN      TXT    "Located in a black hole" " somewhere"
; multiple quoted strings on multiple lines
joe        IN      TXT    ("Located in a black hole" 
                           " somewhere over the rainbow")
; generates a single text string of 
; Located in a black hole somewhere over the rainbow