topic Re: TXT verification records with multiple values in APIs & Integrations

TXT verification records with multiple values

shaneiseminger — Tue, 25 May 2021 23:07:49 GMT

Hello,

Today I noticed a warning in our Hubspot developer account saying we needed to verify our domain. It was verified previously, but apparently it's become un-verified, and I believe it's because we have multiple values in our TXT records (the Hubspot verification key is in there and has been in there for some time).

I could remove the other values temporarily (and I think that maybe what we did last time) but that's not really a good solution because it'll just go un-verified again at some point in the future.

The challenge here seems to be that Hubspot does not support multiple values in a TXT record, though Google and other providers do. Removing the other values is not an option. We have to also keep our domain verified with Google, so that value has to stay, and we also have SPF records in there too, which are pretty important for our email deliverability.

How do we verify our domain without removing the other necessary values in the TXT record?

Re: TXT verification records with multiple values

dennisedson — Wed, 26 May 2021 15:36:23 GMT

Hey @shaneiseminger

I do not believe it matters how many txt records you have as long as you have the correct one there...I am verifying internally and will respond if I am incorrect.

Re: TXT verification records with multiple values

shaneiseminger — Wed, 26 May 2021 16:58:51 GMT

Thanks — I’ve just now been able to verify the domain with multiple values.

The problem was in Route53. It wasn’t returning the multiple values correctly. After mucking around with the records, and waiting for the DNS cache to expire, I eventually got it to return correctly. In Route53, multiple values must each be on its own line, and any trailing spaces seem to mess it up too.

For anyone else with this issue, multiple values should look like this:

$ dig txt domain.com [ ... ] ;; ANSWER SECTION: domain.com. 7200 IN TXT "hubspot-developer-verification=xxxxx" domain.com. 7200 IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx include:mailhost1 include:mailhost2 -all" domain.com. 7200 IN TXT "google-site-verification=xxxxx"

Instead, I was getting records that looked like this:

domain.com. 4386 IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx include:mailhost1 include:mailhost2 -all" "hubspot-developer-verification=xxxxx" "google-site-verification=xxxx"

And randomly even this:

domain.com. 3679 IN TXT "hubspot-developer-verification=xxxxx" "google-site-verification=xxxxx" domain.com. 3679 IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx include:mailhost1 include:mailhost2 -all"

So it seems that Route53 was being finicky about our records.

Hubspot's verification does seem to be subject to DNS caching, as I had to wait for our cache period (7200s) to have fully elaped for it to work. It's also possible that some Route53 hosts were hanging onto cached records. It did seem to take quite a while for Route53 to consistently return multiple values.

Re: TXT verification records with multiple values

dennisedson — Wed, 26 May 2021 17:29:00 GMT

@shaneiseminger

Thanks for writing up the solution. Much better than my tepid at best response 😉

Re: TXT verification records with multiple values

MZikic — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 14:07:11 GMT

It seems that the issue is still present with hubspot domain verification. It is complaining that the record is not found, while picking a random line from multiple txt records.