Playing with the Kubernetes API

In my journey to learn the Kubernetes API, the first part is to connect to it.

You could use simple curl using credentials from $KUBECONFIG to do it, but Kubernetes provides a simpler and better way to connect to it: kubectl proxy --port=8080. This command will create a proxy between your localhost and your target kubernetes API according to your current kubernetes context.

After that you could keep using curl to just communicate to the api like curl localhost:8080/apis/apps/v1/deployments; however, you can replicate the same with kubectl using kubectl get --raw=<uri>. For instance, the previous curl command can be translated to kubectl get --raw=/apis/apps/v1/deployments.

Watch - Checking Kubernetes events in a resource

If you are curious about which events are happening in a resource, you can use watch for it. For this, you need the Kubernetes object resource version which can be used to initiate a watch against the server. The server will return all changes(creates, deletes and updates) that occur after the supplied resourceVersion.

#Starting proxy
$kubectl proxy --port=8080

#Obtaining resourceVersion
$RESOURCE_VERSION=$(kubectl get --raw=/api/v1/namespaces/default/pods | jq -r .metadata.resourceVersion)

#Starting watch
$kubectl get --raw=/api/v1/namespaces/default/pods?watch=1&resourceVersion=${RESOURCE_VERSION}

The watch in Linux starts as a background job by default. You can check it with jobs. After that, you can bring it to the foreground using fg [job_number]. If the client disconnects, you can restart it using the last returned resourceVersion, or performing a new request and begin again.

Bibliography

Tags kubernetes api kubcetl watch
Luis Michael Ibarra
I build, break, fix, and run stuff professionaly