Be the first user to complete this post

Need to know the difference between CNAME and an A Record to deploy your REST API? We got you covered.

If you are building a restful API using express/nodejs, it is likely that you will one day find yourself in a strange situation where you will want to create a subdomain such as api.myexample.com (assuming that you site is myexample.com). Then you open your registrar's configuration, you figure out that you probably need to add some CNAME and A record entries. But what in the name of god are those two things. This post is to help you get the gist of it in, lets say, 20 seconds!

CNAME: Always points to another domain name. A Record: Always points to an IP Address.

Usually, you will setup stuff just the way its shown in the diagram so that tomorrow even if you feel a need to change your host ip address, just update your A Record mapping and you're good to go.

visualizations 6