Note: Impatient readers may head straight to Quick Start.

Using Kubebuilder v1 or v2? Check the legacy documentation for v1 or v2

Who is this for

Users of Kubernetes

Users of Kubernetes will develop a deeper understanding of Kubernetes through learning the fundamental concepts behind how APIs are designed and implemented. This book will teach readers how to develop their own Kubernetes APIs and the principles from which the core Kubernetes APIs are designed.

Including:

  • The structure of Kubernetes APIs and Resources
  • API versioning semantics
  • Self-healing
  • Garbage Collection and Finalizers
  • Declarative vs Imperative APIs
  • Level-Based vs Edge-Base APIs
  • Resources vs Subresources

Kubernetes API extension developers

API extension developers will learn the principles and concepts behind implementing canonical Kubernetes APIs, as well as simple tools and libraries for rapid execution. This book covers pitfalls and misconceptions that extension developers commonly encounter.

Including:

  • How to batch multiple events into a single reconciliation call
  • How to configure periodic reconciliation
  • Forthcoming
    • When to use the lister cache vs live lookups
    • Garbage Collection vs Finalizers
    • How to use Declarative vs Webhook Validation
    • How to implement API versioning

Why Kubernetes APIs

Kubernetes APIs provide consistent and well defined endpoints for objects adhering to a consistent and rich structure.

This approach has fostered a rich ecosystem of tools and libraries for working with Kubernetes APIs.

Users work with the APIs through declaring objects as yaml or json config, and using common tooling to manage the objects.

Building services as Kubernetes APIs provides many advantages to plain old REST, including:

  • Hosted API endpoints, storage, and validation.
  • Rich tooling and CLIs such as kubectl and kustomize.
  • Support for AuthN and granular AuthZ.
  • Support for API evolution through API versioning and conversion.
  • Facilitation of adaptive / self-healing APIs that continuously respond to changes in the system state without user intervention.
  • Kubernetes as a hosting environment

Developers may build and publish their own Kubernetes APIs for installation into running Kubernetes clusters.

Contribution

If you like to contribute to either this book or the code, please be so kind to read our Contribution guidelines first.

Resources

Architecture Concept Diagram

The following diagram will help you get a better idea over the Kubebuilder concepts and architecture.

Quick Start

This Quick Start guide will cover:

Prerequisites

  • go version v1.20.0+
  • docker version 17.03+.
  • kubectl version v1.11.3+.
  • Access to a Kubernetes v1.11.3+ cluster.

Installation

Install kubebuilder:

# download kubebuilder and install locally.
curl -L -o kubebuilder "https://go.kubebuilder.io/dl/latest/$(go env GOOS)/$(go env GOARCH)"
chmod +x kubebuilder && mv kubebuilder /usr/local/bin/

Create a Project

Create a directory, and then run the init command inside of it to initialize a new project. Follows an example.

mkdir -p ~/projects/guestbook
cd ~/projects/guestbook
kubebuilder init --domain my.domain --repo my.domain/guestbook

Create an API

Run the following command to create a new API (group/version) as webapp/v1 and the new Kind(CRD) Guestbook on it:

kubebuilder create api --group webapp --version v1 --kind Guestbook

OPTIONAL: Edit the API definition and the reconciliation business logic. For more info see Designing an API and What’s in a Controller.

If you are editing the API definitions, generate the manifests such as Custom Resources (CRs) or Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) using

make manifests
Click here to see an example. (api/v1/guestbook_types.go)

// GuestbookSpec defines the desired state of Guestbook
type GuestbookSpec struct {
	// INSERT ADDITIONAL SPEC FIELDS - desired state of cluster
	// Important: Run "make" to regenerate code after modifying this file

	// Quantity of instances
	// +kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=1
	// +kubebuilder:validation:Maximum=10
	Size int32 `json:"size"`

	// Name of the ConfigMap for GuestbookSpec's configuration
	// +kubebuilder:validation:MaxLength=15
	// +kubebuilder:validation:MinLength=1
	ConfigMapName string `json:"configMapName"`

	// +kubebuilder:validation:Enum=Phone;Address;Name
	Type string `json:"alias,omitempty"`
}

// GuestbookStatus defines the observed state of Guestbook
type GuestbookStatus struct {
	// INSERT ADDITIONAL STATUS FIELD - define observed state of cluster
	// Important: Run "make" to regenerate code after modifying this file

	// PodName of the active Guestbook node.
	Active string `json:"active"`

	// PodNames of the standby Guestbook nodes.
	Standby []string `json:"standby"`
}

// +kubebuilder:object:root=true
// +kubebuilder:subresource:status
// +kubebuilder:resource:scope=Cluster

// Guestbook is the Schema for the guestbooks API
type Guestbook struct {
	metav1.TypeMeta   `json:",inline"`
	metav1.ObjectMeta `json:"metadata,omitempty"`

	Spec   GuestbookSpec   `json:"spec,omitempty"`
	Status GuestbookStatus `json:"status,omitempty"`
}

Test It Out

You’ll need a Kubernetes cluster to run against. You can use KIND to get a local cluster for testing, or run against a remote cluster.

Install the CRDs into the cluster:

make install

For quick feedback and code-level debugging, run your controller (this will run in the foreground, so switch to a new terminal if you want to leave it running):

make run

Install Instances of Custom Resources

If you pressed y for Create Resource [y/n] then you created a CR for your CRD in your samples (make sure to edit them first if you’ve changed the API definition):

kubectl apply -k config/samples/

Run It On the Cluster

When your controller is ready to be packaged and tested in other clusters.

Build and push your image to the location specified by IMG:

make docker-build docker-push IMG=<some-registry>/<project-name>:tag

Deploy the controller to the cluster with image specified by IMG:

make deploy IMG=<some-registry>/<project-name>:tag

Uninstall CRDs

To delete your CRDs from the cluster:

make uninstall

Undeploy controller

Undeploy the controller to the cluster:

make undeploy

Next Step

Now, see the architecture concept diagram for a better overview and follow up the CronJob tutorial to better understand how it works by developing a demo example project.

Getting Started

Overview

By following the Operator Pattern, it’s possible not only to provide all expected resources but also to manage them dynamically, programmatically, and at execution time. To illustrate this idea, imagine if someone accidentally changed a configuration or removed a resource by mistake; in this case, the operator could fix it without any human intervention.

Sample Project

We will create a sample project to let you know how it works. This sample will:

  • Reconcile a Memcached CR - which represents an instance of a Memcached deployed/managed on cluster
  • Create a Deployment with the Memcached image
  • Not allow more instances than the size defined in the CR which will be applied
  • Update the Memcached CR status

Use the following steps.

Create a project

First, create and navigate into a directory for your project. Then, initialize it using kubebuilder:

mkdir $GOPATH/memcached-operator
cd $GOPATH/memcached-operator
kubebuilder init --domain=example.com

Create the Memcached API (CRD):

Next, we’ll create a new API responsible for deploying and managing our Memcached solution. In this instance, we will utilize the [Deploy Image Plugin][deploy-image] to get a comprehensive code implementation for our solution.

kubebuilder create api --group cache --version v1alpha1 --kind Memcached --image=memcached:1.4.36-alpine --image-container-command="memcached,-m=64,-o,modern,-v" --image-container-port="11211" --run-as-user="1001" --plugins="deploy-image/v1-alpha" --make=false

Understanding APIs

This command’s primary aim is to produce the Custom Resource (CR) and Custom Resource Definition (CRD) for the Memcached Kind. It creates the API with the group cache.example.com and version v1alpha1, uniquely identifying the new CRD of the Memcached Kind. By leveraging the Kubebuilder tool, we can define our APIs and objects representing our solutions for these platforms. While we’ve added only one Kind of resource in this example, you can have as many Groups and Kinds as necessary. Simply put, think of CRDs as the definition of our custom Objects, while CRs are instances of them.

Define your API

In this example, observe that the Memcached Kind (CRD) possesses certain specifications. These were scaffolded by the Deploy Image plugin, building upon the default scaffold for management purposes:

Status and Specs

The MemcachedSpec section is where we encapsulate all the available specifications and configurations for our Custom Resource (CR). Furthermore, it’s worth noting that we employ Status Conditions. This ensures proficient management of the Memcached CR. When any change transpires, these conditions equip us with the necessary data to discern the current status of this resource within the Kubernetes cluster. This is akin to the status insights we obtain for a Deployment resource.

From: api/v1alpha1/memcached_types.go

// MemcachedSpec defines the desired state of Memcached
type MemcachedSpec struct {
	// INSERT ADDITIONAL SPEC FIELDS - desired state of cluster
	// Important: Run "make" to regenerate code after modifying this file

	// Size defines the number of Memcached instances
	// The following markers will use OpenAPI v3 schema to validate the value
	// More info: https://book.kubebuilder.io/reference/markers/crd-validation.html
	// +kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=1
	// +kubebuilder:validation:Maximum=3
	// +kubebuilder:validation:ExclusiveMaximum=false
	Size int32 `json:"size,omitempty"`

	// Port defines the port that will be used to init the container with the image
	ContainerPort int32 `json:"containerPort,omitempty"`
}

// MemcachedStatus defines the observed state of Memcached
type MemcachedStatus struct {
	// Represents the observations of a Memcached's current state.
	// Memcached.status.conditions.type are: "Available", "Progressing", and "Degraded"
	// Memcached.status.conditions.status are one of True, False, Unknown.
	// Memcached.status.conditions.reason the value should be a CamelCase string and producers of specific
	// condition types may define expected values and meanings for this field, and whether the values
	// are considered a guaranteed API.
	// Memcached.status.conditions.Message is a human readable message indicating details about the transition.
	// For further information see: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/contributors/devel/sig-architecture/api-conventions.md#typical-status-properties

	Conditions []metav1.Condition `json:"conditions,omitempty" patchStrategy:"merge" patchMergeKey:"type" protobuf:"bytes,1,rep,name=conditions"`
}

Thus, when we introduce new specifications to this file and execute the make generate command, we utilize controller-gen to generate the CRD manifest, which is located under the config/crd/bases directory.

Markers and validations

Moreover, it’s important to note that we’re employing markers, such as +kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=1. These markers help in defining validations and criteria, ensuring that data provided by users — when they create or edit a Custom Resource for the Memcached Kind — is properly validated. For a comprehensive list and details of available markers, refer the Markers documentation. Observe the validation schema within the CRD; this schema ensures that the Kubernetes API properly validates the Custom Resources (CRs) that are applied:

From: config/crd/bases/cache.example.com_memcacheds.yaml

description: MemcachedSpec defines the desired state of Memcached
properties:
  containerPort:
    description: Port defines the port that will be used to init the container
      with the image
    format: int32
    type: integer
  size:
    description: 'Size defines the number of Memcached instances The following
      markers will use OpenAPI v3 schema to validate the value More info:
      https://book.kubebuilder.io/reference/markers/crd-validation.html'
    format: int32
    maximum: 3 ## Generated from the marker +kubebuilder:validation:Maximum=3
    minimum: 1 ## Generated from the marker +kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=1
    type: integer
type: object

Sample of Custom Resources

The manifests located under the “config/samples” directory serve as examples of Custom Resources that can be applied to the cluster. In this particular example, by applying the given resource to the cluster, we would generate a Deployment with a single instance size (see size: 1).

From: config/samples/cache_v1alpha1_memcached.yaml

apiVersion: cache.example.com/v1alpha1
kind: Memcached
metadata:
  name: memcached-sample
spec:
  # TODO(user): edit the following value to ensure the number
  # of Pods/Instances your Operand must have on cluster
  size: 1

  # TODO(user): edit the following value to ensure the container has the right port to be initialized
  containerPort: 11211

Reconciliation Process

The reconciliation function plays a pivotal role in ensuring synchronization between resources and their specifications based on the business logic embedded within them. Essentially, it operates like a loop, continuously checking conditions and performing actions until all conditions align with its implementation. Here’s pseudo-code to illustrate this:

reconcile App {

  // Check if a Deployment for the app exists, if not, create one
  // If there's an error, then restart from the beginning of the reconcile
  if err != nil {
    return reconcile.Result{}, err
  }

  // Check if a Service for the app exists, if not, create one 
  // If there's an error, then restart from the beginning of the reconcile
  if err != nil {
    return reconcile.Result{}, err
  }

  // Look for Database CR/CRD 
  // Check the Database Deployment's replicas size
  // If deployment.replicas size doesn't match cr.size, then update it
  // Then, restart from the beginning of the reconcile. For example, by returning `reconcile.Result{Requeue: true}, nil`.
  if err != nil {
    return reconcile.Result{Requeue: true}, nil
  }
  ...

  // If at the end of the loop:
  // Everything was executed successfully, and the reconcile can stop  
  return reconcile.Result{}, nil

}

Return Options

The following are a few possible return options to restart the Reconcile:

  • With the error:
return ctrl.Result{}, err
  • Without an error:
return ctrl.Result{Requeue: true}, nil
  • Therefore, to stop the Reconcile, use:
return ctrl.Result{}, nil
  • Reconcile again after X time:
return ctrl.Result{RequeueAfter: nextRun.Sub(r.Now())}, nil

In the context of our example

When a Custom Resource is applied to the cluster, there’s a designated controller to manage the Memcached Kind. You can check how its reconciliation is implemented:

From: internal/controller/memcached_controller.go

func (r *MemcachedReconciler) Reconcile(ctx context.Context, req ctrl.Request) (ctrl.Result, error) {
	log := log.FromContext(ctx)

	// Fetch the Memcached instance
	// The purpose is check if the Custom Resource for the Kind Memcached
	// is applied on the cluster if not we return nil to stop the reconciliation
	memcached := &examplecomv1alpha1.Memcached{}
	err := r.Get(ctx, req.NamespacedName, memcached)
	if err != nil {
		if apierrors.IsNotFound(err) {
			// If the custom resource is not found then it usually means that it was deleted or not created
			// In this way, we will stop the reconciliation
			log.Info("memcached resource not found. Ignoring since object must be deleted")
			return ctrl.Result{}, nil
		}
		// Error reading the object - requeue the request.
		log.Error(err, "Failed to get memcached")
		return ctrl.Result{}, err
	}

	// Let's just set the status as Unknown when no status is available
	if memcached.Status.Conditions == nil || len(memcached.Status.Conditions) == 0 {
		meta.SetStatusCondition(&memcached.Status.Conditions, metav1.Condition{Type: typeAvailableMemcached, Status: metav1.ConditionUnknown, Reason: "Reconciling", Message: "Starting reconciliation"})
		if err = r.Status().Update(ctx, memcached); err != nil {
			log.Error(err, "Failed to update Memcached status")
			return ctrl.Result{}, err
		}

		// Let's re-fetch the memcached Custom Resource after updating the status
		// so that we have the latest state of the resource on the cluster and we will avoid
		// raising the error "the object has been modified, please apply
		// your changes to the latest version and try again" which would re-trigger the reconciliation
		// if we try to update it again in the following operations
		if err := r.Get(ctx, req.NamespacedName, memcached); err != nil {
			log.Error(err, "Failed to re-fetch memcached")
			return ctrl.Result{}, err
		}
	}

	// Let's add a finalizer. Then, we can define some operations which should
	// occur before the custom resource to be deleted.
	// More info: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/working-with-objects/finalizers
	if !controllerutil.ContainsFinalizer(memcached, memcachedFinalizer) {
		log.Info("Adding Finalizer for Memcached")
		if ok := controllerutil.AddFinalizer(memcached, memcachedFinalizer); !ok {
			log.Error(err, "Failed to add finalizer into the custom resource")
			return ctrl.Result{Requeue: true}, nil
		}

		if err = r.Update(ctx, memcached); err != nil {
			log.Error(err, "Failed to update custom resource to add finalizer")
			return ctrl.Result{}, err
		}
	}

	// Check if the Memcached instance is marked to be deleted, which is
	// indicated by the deletion timestamp being set.
	isMemcachedMarkedToBeDeleted := memcached.GetDeletionTimestamp() != nil
	if isMemcachedMarkedToBeDeleted {
		if controllerutil.ContainsFinalizer(memcached, memcachedFinalizer) {
			log.Info("Performing Finalizer Operations for Memcached before delete CR")

			// Let's add here a status "Downgrade" to reflect that this resource began its process to be terminated.
			meta.SetStatusCondition(&memcached.Status.Conditions, metav1.Condition{Type: typeDegradedMemcached,
				Status: metav1.ConditionUnknown, Reason: "Finalizing",
				Message: fmt.Sprintf("Performing finalizer operations for the custom resource: %s ", memcached.Name)})

			if err := r.Status().Update(ctx, memcached); err != nil {
				log.Error(err, "Failed to update Memcached status")
				return ctrl.Result{}, err
			}

			// Perform all operations required before removing the finalizer and allow
			// the Kubernetes API to remove the custom resource.
			r.doFinalizerOperationsForMemcached(memcached)

			// TODO(user): If you add operations to the doFinalizerOperationsForMemcached method
			// then you need to ensure that all worked fine before deleting and updating the Downgrade status
			// otherwise, you should requeue here.

			// Re-fetch the memcached Custom Resource before updating the status
			// so that we have the latest state of the resource on the cluster and we will avoid
			// raising the error "the object has been modified, please apply
			// your changes to the latest version and try again" which would re-trigger the reconciliation
			if err := r.Get(ctx, req.NamespacedName, memcached); err != nil {
				log.Error(err, "Failed to re-fetch memcached")
				return ctrl.Result{}, err
			}

			meta.SetStatusCondition(&memcached.Status.Conditions, metav1.Condition{Type: typeDegradedMemcached,
				Status: metav1.ConditionTrue, Reason: "Finalizing",
				Message: fmt.Sprintf("Finalizer operations for custom resource %s name were successfully accomplished", memcached.Name)})

			if err := r.Status().Update(ctx, memcached); err != nil {
				log.Error(err, "Failed to update Memcached status")
				return ctrl.Result{}, err
			}

			log.Info("Removing Finalizer for Memcached after successfully perform the operations")
			if ok := controllerutil.RemoveFinalizer(memcached, memcachedFinalizer); !ok {
				log.Error(err, "Failed to remove finalizer for Memcached")
				return ctrl.Result{Requeue: true}, nil
			}

			if err := r.Update(ctx, memcached); err != nil {
				log.Error(err, "Failed to remove finalizer for Memcached")
				return ctrl.Result{}, err
			}
		}
		return ctrl.Result{}, nil
	}

	// Check if the deployment already exists, if not create a new one
	found := &appsv1.Deployment{}
	err = r.Get(ctx, types.NamespacedName{Name: memcached.Name, Namespace: memcached.Namespace}, found)
	if err != nil && apierrors.IsNotFound(err) {
		// Define a new deployment
		dep, err := r.deploymentForMemcached(memcached)
		if err != nil {
			log.Error(err, "Failed to define new Deployment resource for Memcached")

			// The following implementation will update the status
			meta.SetStatusCondition(&memcached.Status.Conditions, metav1.Condition{Type: typeAvailableMemcached,
				Status: metav1.ConditionFalse, Reason: "Reconciling",
				Message: fmt.Sprintf("Failed to create Deployment for the custom resource (%s): (%s)", memcached.Name, err)})

			if err := r.Status().Update(ctx, memcached); err != nil {
				log.Error(err, "Failed to update Memcached status")
				return ctrl.Result{}, err
			}

			return ctrl.Result{}, err
		}

		log.Info("Creating a new Deployment",
			"Deployment.Namespace", dep.Namespace, "Deployment.Name", dep.Name)
		if err = r.Create(ctx, dep); err != nil {
			log.Error(err, "Failed to create new Deployment",
				"Deployment.Namespace", dep.Namespace, "Deployment.Name", dep.Name)
			return ctrl.Result{}, err
		}

		// Deployment created successfully
		// We will requeue the reconciliation so that we can ensure the state
		// and move forward for the next operations
		return ctrl.Result{RequeueAfter: time.Minute}, nil
	} else if err != nil {
		log.Error(err, "Failed to get Deployment")
		// Let's return the error for the reconciliation be re-trigged again
		return ctrl.Result{}, err
	}

	// The CRD API is defining that the Memcached type, have a MemcachedSpec.Size field
	// to set the quantity of Deployment instances is the desired state on the cluster.
	// Therefore, the following code will ensure the Deployment size is the same as defined
	// via the Size spec of the Custom Resource which we are reconciling.
	size := memcached.Spec.Size
	if *found.Spec.Replicas != size {
		found.Spec.Replicas = &size
		if err = r.Update(ctx, found); err != nil {
			log.Error(err, "Failed to update Deployment",
				"Deployment.Namespace", found.Namespace, "Deployment.Name", found.Name)

			// Re-fetch the memcached Custom Resource before updating the status
			// so that we have the latest state of the resource on the cluster and we will avoid
			// raising the error "the object has been modified, please apply
			// your changes to the latest version and try again" which would re-trigger the reconciliation
			if err := r.Get(ctx, req.NamespacedName, memcached); err != nil {
				log.Error(err, "Failed to re-fetch memcached")
				return ctrl.Result{}, err
			}

			// The following implementation will update the status
			meta.SetStatusCondition(&memcached.Status.Conditions, metav1.Condition{Type: typeAvailableMemcached,
				Status: metav1.ConditionFalse, Reason: "Resizing",
				Message: fmt.Sprintf("Failed to update the size for the custom resource (%s): (%s)", memcached.Name, err)})

			if err := r.Status().Update(ctx, memcached); err != nil {
				log.Error(err, "Failed to update Memcached status")
				return ctrl.Result{}, err
			}

			return ctrl.Result{}, err
		}

		// Now, that we update the size we want to requeue the reconciliation
		// so that we can ensure that we have the latest state of the resource before
		// update. Also, it will help ensure the desired state on the cluster
		return ctrl.Result{Requeue: true}, nil
	}

	// The following implementation will update the status
	meta.SetStatusCondition(&memcached.Status.Conditions, metav1.Condition{Type: typeAvailableMemcached,
		Status: metav1.ConditionTrue, Reason: "Reconciling",
		Message: fmt.Sprintf("Deployment for custom resource (%s) with %d replicas created successfully", memcached.Name, size)})

	if err := r.Status().Update(ctx, memcached); err != nil {
		log.Error(err, "Failed to update Memcached status")
		return ctrl.Result{}, err
	}

	return ctrl.Result{}, nil
}

Observing changes on cluster

This controller is persistently observant, monitoring any events associated with this Kind. As a result, pertinent changes instantly set off the controller’s reconciliation process. It’s worth noting that we have implemented the watches feature. (More info). This allows us to monitor events related to creating, updating, or deleting a Custom Resource of the Memcached kind, as well as the Deployment which is orchestrated and owned by its respective controller. Observe:

// SetupWithManager sets up the controller with the Manager.
// Note that the Deployment will be also watched in order to ensure its
// desirable state on the cluster
func (r *MemcachedReconciler) SetupWithManager(mgr ctrl.Manager) error {
    return ctrl.NewControllerManagedBy(mgr).
    For(&examplecomv1alpha1.Memcached{}). ## Create watches for the Memcached Kind
    Owns(&appsv1.Deployment{}). ## Create watches for the Deployment which has its controller owned reference
    Complete(r)
}

Setting the RBAC permissions

The RBAC permissions are now configured via RBAC markers, which are used to generate and update the manifest files present in config/rbac/. These markers can be found (and should be defined) on the Reconcile() method of each controller, see how it is implemented in our example:

//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=cache.example.com,resources=memcacheds,verbs=get;list;watch;create;update;patch;delete
//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=cache.example.com,resources=memcacheds/status,verbs=get;update;patch
//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=cache.example.com,resources=memcacheds/finalizers,verbs=update
//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=core,resources=events,verbs=create;patch
//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=apps,resources=deployments,verbs=get;list;watch;create;update;patch;delete
//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=core,resources=pods,verbs=get;list;watch

It’s important to highlight that if you wish to add or modify RBAC rules, you can do so by updating or adding the respective markers in the controller. After making the necessary changes, run the make generate command. This will prompt controller-gen to refresh the files located under config/rbac.

Manager (main.go)

The Manager plays a crucial role in overseeing Controllers, which in turn enable operations on the cluster side. If you inspect the cmd/main.go file, you’ll come across the following:

...
    mgr, err := ctrl.NewManager(ctrl.GetConfigOrDie(), ctrl.Options{
        Scheme:                 scheme,
        Metrics:                metricsserver.Options{BindAddress: metricsAddr},
        HealthProbeBindAddress: probeAddr,
        LeaderElection:         enableLeaderElection,
        LeaderElectionID:       "1836d577.testproject.org",
        // LeaderElectionReleaseOnCancel defines if the leader should step down voluntarily
        // when the Manager ends. This requires the binary to immediately end when the
        // Manager is stopped, otherwise, this setting is unsafe. Setting this significantly
        // speeds up voluntary leader transitions as the new leader doesn't have to wait
        // the LeaseDuration time first.
        //
        // In the default scaffold provided, the program ends immediately after
        // the manager stops, so it would be fine to enable this option. However,
        // if you are doing, or are intending to do, any operation such as perform cleanups
        // after the manager stops then its usage might be unsafe.
        // LeaderElectionReleaseOnCancel: true,
    })
    if err != nil {
        setupLog.Error(err, "unable to start manager")
        os.Exit(1)
    }

The code snippet above outlines the configuration options for the Manager. While we won’t be altering this in our current example, it’s crucial to understand its location and the initialization process of your operator-based image. The Manager is responsible for overseeing the controllers that are produced for your operator’s APIs.

Checking the Project running in the cluster

At this point, you can execute the commands highlighted in the quick-start. By executing make build IMG=myregistry/example:1.0.0, you’ll build the image for your project. For testing purposes, it’s recommended to publish this image to a public registry. This ensures easy accessibility, eliminating the need for additional configurations. Once that’s done, you can deploy the image to the cluster using the make deploy IMG=myregistry/example:1.0.0 command.

Next Steps

  • To delve deeper into developing your solution, consider going through the provided tutorials.
  • For insights on optimizing your approach, refer to the Best Practices documentation.

Tutorial: Building CronJob

Too many tutorials start out with some really contrived setup, or some toy application that gets the basics across, and then stalls out on the more complicated stuff. Instead, this tutorial should take you through (almost) the full gamut of complexity with Kubebuilder, starting off simple and building up to something pretty full-featured.

Let’s pretend (and sure, this is a teensy bit contrived) that we’ve finally gotten tired of the maintenance burden of the non-Kubebuilder implementation of the CronJob controller in Kubernetes, and we’d like to rewrite it using Kubebuilder.

The job (no pun intended) of the CronJob controller is to run one-off tasks on the Kubernetes cluster at regular intervals. It does this by building on top of the Job controller, whose task is to run one-off tasks once, seeing them to completion.

Instead of trying to tackle rewriting the Job controller as well, we’ll use this as an opportunity to see how to interact with external types.

Scaffolding Out Our Project

As covered in the quick start, we’ll need to scaffold out a new project. Make sure you’ve installed Kubebuilder, then scaffold out a new project:

# create a project directory, and then run the init command.
mkdir project
cd project
# we'll use a domain of tutorial.kubebuilder.io,
# so all API groups will be <group>.tutorial.kubebuilder.io.
kubebuilder init --domain tutorial.kubebuilder.io --repo tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project

Now that we’ve got a project in place, let’s take a look at what Kubebuilder has scaffolded for us so far…

What’s in a basic project?

When scaffolding out a new project, Kubebuilder provides us with a few basic pieces of boilerplate.

Build Infrastructure

First up, basic infrastructure for building your project:

go.mod: A new Go module matching our project, with basic dependencies
module tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project

go 1.21

require (
	github.com/onsi/ginkgo/v2 v2.14.0
	github.com/onsi/gomega v1.30.0
	github.com/robfig/cron v1.2.0
	k8s.io/api v0.29.0
	k8s.io/apimachinery v0.29.0
	k8s.io/client-go v0.29.0
	sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime v0.17.0
)

require (
	github.com/beorn7/perks v1.0.1 // indirect
	github.com/cespare/xxhash/v2 v2.2.0 // indirect
	github.com/davecgh/go-spew v1.1.1 // indirect
	github.com/emicklei/go-restful/v3 v3.11.0 // indirect
	github.com/evanphx/json-patch/v5 v5.8.0 // indirect
	github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify v1.7.0 // indirect
	github.com/go-logr/logr v1.4.1 // indirect
	github.com/go-logr/zapr v1.3.0 // indirect
	github.com/go-openapi/jsonpointer v0.19.6 // indirect
	github.com/go-openapi/jsonreference v0.20.2 // indirect
	github.com/go-openapi/swag v0.22.3 // indirect
	github.com/go-task/slim-sprig v0.0.0-20230315185526-52ccab3ef572 // indirect
	github.com/gogo/protobuf v1.3.2 // indirect
	github.com/golang/groupcache v0.0.0-20210331224755-41bb18bfe9da // indirect
	github.com/golang/protobuf v1.5.3 // indirect
	github.com/google/gnostic-models v0.6.8 // indirect
	github.com/google/go-cmp v0.6.0 // indirect
	github.com/google/gofuzz v1.2.0 // indirect
	github.com/google/pprof v0.0.0-20210720184732-4bb14d4b1be1 // indirect
	github.com/google/uuid v1.3.0 // indirect
	github.com/imdario/mergo v0.3.6 // indirect
	github.com/josharian/intern v1.0.0 // indirect
	github.com/json-iterator/go v1.1.12 // indirect
	github.com/mailru/easyjson v0.7.7 // indirect
	github.com/matttproud/golang_protobuf_extensions/v2 v2.0.0 // indirect
	github.com/modern-go/concurrent v0.0.0-20180306012644-bacd9c7ef1dd // indirect
	github.com/modern-go/reflect2 v1.0.2 // indirect
	github.com/munnerz/goautoneg v0.0.0-20191010083416-a7dc8b61c822 // indirect
	github.com/pkg/errors v0.9.1 // indirect
	github.com/prometheus/client_golang v1.18.0 // indirect
	github.com/prometheus/client_model v0.5.0 // indirect
	github.com/prometheus/common v0.45.0 // indirect
	github.com/prometheus/procfs v0.12.0 // indirect
	github.com/spf13/pflag v1.0.5 // indirect
	go.uber.org/multierr v1.11.0 // indirect
	go.uber.org/zap v1.26.0 // indirect
	golang.org/x/exp v0.0.0-20220722155223-a9213eeb770e // indirect
	golang.org/x/net v0.19.0 // indirect
	golang.org/x/oauth2 v0.12.0 // indirect
	golang.org/x/sys v0.16.0 // indirect
	golang.org/x/term v0.15.0 // indirect
	golang.org/x/text v0.14.0 // indirect
	golang.org/x/time v0.3.0 // indirect
	golang.org/x/tools v0.16.1 // indirect
	gomodules.xyz/jsonpatch/v2 v2.4.0 // indirect
	google.golang.org/appengine v1.6.7 // indirect
	google.golang.org/protobuf v1.31.0 // indirect
	gopkg.in/inf.v0 v0.9.1 // indirect
	gopkg.in/yaml.v2 v2.4.0 // indirect
	gopkg.in/yaml.v3 v3.0.1 // indirect
	k8s.io/apiextensions-apiserver v0.29.0 // indirect
	k8s.io/component-base v0.29.0 // indirect
	k8s.io/klog/v2 v2.110.1 // indirect
	k8s.io/kube-openapi v0.0.0-20231010175941-2dd684a91f00 // indirect
	k8s.io/utils v0.0.0-20230726121419-3b25d923346b // indirect
	sigs.k8s.io/json v0.0.0-20221116044647-bc3834ca7abd // indirect
	sigs.k8s.io/structured-merge-diff/v4 v4.4.1 // indirect
	sigs.k8s.io/yaml v1.4.0 // indirect
)
Makefile: Make targets for building and deploying your controller

# Image URL to use all building/pushing image targets
IMG ?= controller:latest
# ENVTEST_K8S_VERSION refers to the version of kubebuilder assets to be downloaded by envtest binary.
ENVTEST_K8S_VERSION = 1.29.0

# Get the currently used golang install path (in GOPATH/bin, unless GOBIN is set)
ifeq (,$(shell go env GOBIN))
GOBIN=$(shell go env GOPATH)/bin
else
GOBIN=$(shell go env GOBIN)
endif

# CONTAINER_TOOL defines the container tool to be used for building images.
# Be aware that the target commands are only tested with Docker which is
# scaffolded by default. However, you might want to replace it to use other
# tools. (i.e. podman)
CONTAINER_TOOL ?= docker

# Setting SHELL to bash allows bash commands to be executed by recipes.
# Options are set to exit when a recipe line exits non-zero or a piped command fails.
SHELL = /usr/bin/env bash -o pipefail
.SHELLFLAGS = -ec

.PHONY: all
all: build

##@ General

# The help target prints out all targets with their descriptions organized
# beneath their categories. The categories are represented by '##@' and the
# target descriptions by '##'. The awk command is responsible for reading the
# entire set of makefiles included in this invocation, looking for lines of the
# file as xyz: ## something, and then pretty-format the target and help. Then,
# if there's a line with ##@ something, that gets pretty-printed as a category.
# More info on the usage of ANSI control characters for terminal formatting:
# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#SGR_parameters
# More info on the awk command:
# http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_adv_awk.php

.PHONY: help
help: ## Display this help.
	@awk 'BEGIN {FS = ":.*##"; printf "\nUsage:\n  make \033[36m<target>\033[0m\n"} /^[a-zA-Z_0-9-]+:.*?##/ { printf "  \033[36m%-15s\033[0m %s\n", $$1, $$2 } /^##@/ { printf "\n\033[1m%s\033[0m\n", substr($$0, 5) } ' $(MAKEFILE_LIST)

##@ Development

.PHONY: manifests
manifests: controller-gen ## Generate WebhookConfiguration, ClusterRole and CustomResourceDefinition objects.
	$(CONTROLLER_GEN) rbac:roleName=manager-role crd webhook paths="./..." output:crd:artifacts:config=config/crd/bases

.PHONY: generate
generate: controller-gen ## Generate code containing DeepCopy, DeepCopyInto, and DeepCopyObject method implementations.
	$(CONTROLLER_GEN) object:headerFile="hack/boilerplate.go.txt" paths="./..."

.PHONY: fmt
fmt: ## Run go fmt against code.
	go fmt ./...

.PHONY: vet
vet: ## Run go vet against code.
	go vet ./...

.PHONY: test
test: manifests generate fmt vet envtest ## Run tests.
	KUBEBUILDER_ASSETS="$(shell $(ENVTEST) use $(ENVTEST_K8S_VERSION) --bin-dir $(LOCALBIN) -p path)" go test $$(go list ./... | grep -v /e2e) -coverprofile cover.out

# Utilize Kind or modify the e2e tests to load the image locally, enabling compatibility with other vendors.
.PHONY: test-e2e  # Run the e2e tests against a Kind k8s instance that is spun up.
test-e2e:
	go test ./test/e2e/ -v -ginkgo.v

.PHONY: lint
lint: golangci-lint ## Run golangci-lint linter & yamllint
	$(GOLANGCI_LINT) run

.PHONY: lint-fix
lint-fix: golangci-lint ## Run golangci-lint linter and perform fixes
	$(GOLANGCI_LINT) run --fix

##@ Build

.PHONY: build
build: manifests generate fmt vet ## Build manager binary.
	go build -o bin/manager cmd/main.go

.PHONY: run
run: manifests generate fmt vet ## Run a controller from your host.
	go run ./cmd/main.go

# If you wish to build the manager image targeting other platforms you can use the --platform flag.
# (i.e. docker build --platform linux/arm64). However, you must enable docker buildKit for it.
# More info: https://docs.docker.com/develop/develop-images/build_enhancements/
.PHONY: docker-build
docker-build: ## Build docker image with the manager.
	$(CONTAINER_TOOL) build -t ${IMG} .

.PHONY: docker-push
docker-push: ## Push docker image with the manager.
	$(CONTAINER_TOOL) push ${IMG}

# PLATFORMS defines the target platforms for the manager image be built to provide support to multiple
# architectures. (i.e. make docker-buildx IMG=myregistry/mypoperator:0.0.1). To use this option you need to:
# - be able to use docker buildx. More info: https://docs.docker.com/build/buildx/
# - have enabled BuildKit. More info: https://docs.docker.com/develop/develop-images/build_enhancements/
# - be able to push the image to your registry (i.e. if you do not set a valid value via IMG=<myregistry/image:<tag>> then the export will fail)
# To adequately provide solutions that are compatible with multiple platforms, you should consider using this option.
PLATFORMS ?= linux/arm64,linux/amd64,linux/s390x,linux/ppc64le
.PHONY: docker-buildx
docker-buildx: ## Build and push docker image for the manager for cross-platform support
	# copy existing Dockerfile and insert --platform=${BUILDPLATFORM} into Dockerfile.cross, and preserve the original Dockerfile
	sed -e '1 s/\(^FROM\)/FROM --platform=\$$\{BUILDPLATFORM\}/; t' -e ' 1,// s//FROM --platform=\$$\{BUILDPLATFORM\}/' Dockerfile > Dockerfile.cross
	- $(CONTAINER_TOOL) buildx create --name project-v3-builder
	$(CONTAINER_TOOL) buildx use project-v3-builder
	- $(CONTAINER_TOOL) buildx build --push --platform=$(PLATFORMS) --tag ${IMG} -f Dockerfile.cross .
	- $(CONTAINER_TOOL) buildx rm project-v3-builder
	rm Dockerfile.cross

.PHONY: build-installer
build-installer: manifests generate kustomize ## Generate a consolidated YAML with CRDs and deployment.
	mkdir -p dist
	echo "---" > dist/install.yaml # Clean previous content
	@if [ -d "config/crd" ]; then \
		$(KUSTOMIZE) build config/crd > dist/install.yaml; \
		echo "---" >> dist/install.yaml; \
	fi
	cd config/manager && $(KUSTOMIZE) edit set image controller=${IMG}
	$(KUSTOMIZE) build config/default >> dist/install.yaml

##@ Deployment

ifndef ignore-not-found
  ignore-not-found = false
endif

.PHONY: install
install: manifests kustomize ## Install CRDs into the K8s cluster specified in ~/.kube/config.
	$(KUSTOMIZE) build config/crd | $(KUBECTL) apply -f -

.PHONY: uninstall
uninstall: manifests kustomize ## Uninstall CRDs from the K8s cluster specified in ~/.kube/config. Call with ignore-not-found=true to ignore resource not found errors during deletion.
	$(KUSTOMIZE) build config/crd | $(KUBECTL) delete --ignore-not-found=$(ignore-not-found) -f -

.PHONY: deploy
deploy: manifests kustomize ## Deploy controller to the K8s cluster specified in ~/.kube/config.
	cd config/manager && $(KUSTOMIZE) edit set image controller=${IMG}
	$(KUSTOMIZE) build config/default | $(KUBECTL) apply -f -

.PHONY: undeploy
undeploy: kustomize ## Undeploy controller from the K8s cluster specified in ~/.kube/config. Call with ignore-not-found=true to ignore resource not found errors during deletion.
	$(KUSTOMIZE) build config/default | $(KUBECTL) delete --ignore-not-found=$(ignore-not-found) -f -

##@ Dependencies

## Location to install dependencies to
LOCALBIN ?= $(shell pwd)/bin
$(LOCALBIN):
	mkdir -p $(LOCALBIN)

## Tool Binaries
KUBECTL ?= kubectl
KUSTOMIZE ?= $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize-$(KUSTOMIZE_VERSION)
CONTROLLER_GEN ?= $(LOCALBIN)/controller-gen-$(CONTROLLER_TOOLS_VERSION)
ENVTEST ?= $(LOCALBIN)/setup-envtest-$(ENVTEST_VERSION)
GOLANGCI_LINT = $(LOCALBIN)/golangci-lint-$(GOLANGCI_LINT_VERSION)

## Tool Versions
KUSTOMIZE_VERSION ?= v5.3.0
CONTROLLER_TOOLS_VERSION ?= v0.14.0
ENVTEST_VERSION ?= latest
GOLANGCI_LINT_VERSION ?= v1.54.2

.PHONY: kustomize
kustomize: $(KUSTOMIZE) ## Download kustomize locally if necessary.
$(KUSTOMIZE): $(LOCALBIN)
	$(call go-install-tool,$(KUSTOMIZE),sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kustomize/v5,$(KUSTOMIZE_VERSION))

.PHONY: controller-gen
controller-gen: $(CONTROLLER_GEN) ## Download controller-gen locally if necessary.
$(CONTROLLER_GEN): $(LOCALBIN)
	$(call go-install-tool,$(CONTROLLER_GEN),sigs.k8s.io/controller-tools/cmd/controller-gen,$(CONTROLLER_TOOLS_VERSION))

.PHONY: envtest
envtest: $(ENVTEST) ## Download setup-envtest locally if necessary.
$(ENVTEST): $(LOCALBIN)
	$(call go-install-tool,$(ENVTEST),sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/tools/setup-envtest,$(ENVTEST_VERSION))

.PHONY: golangci-lint
golangci-lint: $(GOLANGCI_LINT) ## Download golangci-lint locally if necessary.
$(GOLANGCI_LINT): $(LOCALBIN)
	$(call go-install-tool,$(GOLANGCI_LINT),github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint,${GOLANGCI_LINT_VERSION})

# go-install-tool will 'go install' any package with custom target and name of binary, if it doesn't exist
# $1 - target path with name of binary (ideally with version)
# $2 - package url which can be installed
# $3 - specific version of package
define go-install-tool
@[ -f $(1) ] || { \
set -e; \
package=$(2)@$(3) ;\
echo "Downloading $${package}" ;\
GOBIN=$(LOCALBIN) go install $${package} ;\
mv "$$(echo "$(1)" | sed "s/-$(3)$$//")" $(1) ;\
}
endef
PROJECT: Kubebuilder metadata for scaffolding new components
# Code generated by tool. DO NOT EDIT.
# This file is used to track the info used to scaffold your project
# and allow the plugins properly work.
# More info: https://book.kubebuilder.io/reference/project-config.html
domain: tutorial.kubebuilder.io
layout:
- go.kubebuilder.io/v4
projectName: project
repo: tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project
resources:
- api:
    crdVersion: v1
    namespaced: true
  controller: true
  domain: tutorial.kubebuilder.io
  group: batch
  kind: CronJob
  path: tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/api/v1
  version: v1
  webhooks:
    defaulting: true
    validation: true
    webhookVersion: v1
version: "3"

Launch Configuration

We also get launch configurations under the config/ directory. Right now, it just contains Kustomize YAML definitions required to launch our controller on a cluster, but once we get started writing our controller, it’ll also hold our CustomResourceDefinitions, RBAC configuration, and WebhookConfigurations.

config/default contains a Kustomize base for launching the controller in a standard configuration.

Each other directory contains a different piece of configuration, refactored out into its own base:

  • config/manager: launch your controllers as pods in the cluster

  • config/rbac: permissions required to run your controllers under their own service account

The Entrypoint

Last, but certainly not least, Kubebuilder scaffolds out the basic entrypoint of our project: main.go. Let’s take a look at that next…

Every journey needs a start, every program needs a main

emptymain.go
Apache License

Copyright 2022 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Our package starts out with some basic imports. Particularly:

  • The core controller-runtime library
  • The default controller-runtime logging, Zap (more on that a bit later)
package main

import (
	"flag"
	"os"

	// Import all Kubernetes client auth plugins (e.g. Azure, GCP, OIDC, etc.)
	// to ensure that exec-entrypoint and run can make use of them.
	_ "k8s.io/client-go/plugin/pkg/client/auth"

	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime"
	utilruntime "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/runtime"
	clientgoscheme "k8s.io/client-go/kubernetes/scheme"
	_ "k8s.io/client-go/plugin/pkg/client/auth/gcp"
	ctrl "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/cache"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/healthz"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/log/zap"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/metrics/server"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/webhook"
	// +kubebuilder:scaffold:imports
)

Every set of controllers needs a Scheme, which provides mappings between Kinds and their corresponding Go types. We’ll talk a bit more about Kinds when we write our API definition, so just keep this in mind for later.

var (
	scheme   = runtime.NewScheme()
	setupLog = ctrl.Log.WithName("setup")
)

func init() {
	utilruntime.Must(clientgoscheme.AddToScheme(scheme))

	//+kubebuilder:scaffold:scheme
}

At this point, our main function is fairly simple:

  • We set up some basic flags for metrics.

  • We instantiate a manager, which keeps track of running all of our controllers, as well as setting up shared caches and clients to the API server (notice we tell the manager about our Scheme).

  • We run our manager, which in turn runs all of our controllers and webhooks. The manager is set up to run until it receives a graceful shutdown signal. This way, when we’re running on Kubernetes, we behave nicely with graceful pod termination.

While we don’t have anything to run just yet, remember where that +kubebuilder:scaffold:builder comment is – things’ll get interesting there soon.

func main() {
	var metricsAddr string
	var enableLeaderElection bool
	var probeAddr string
	flag.StringVar(&metricsAddr, "metrics-bind-address", ":8080", "The address the metric endpoint binds to.")
	flag.StringVar(&probeAddr, "health-probe-bind-address", ":8081", "The address the probe endpoint binds to.")
	flag.BoolVar(&enableLeaderElection, "leader-elect", false,
		"Enable leader election for controller manager. "+
			"Enabling this will ensure there is only one active controller manager.")
	opts := zap.Options{
		Development: true,
	}
	opts.BindFlags(flag.CommandLine)
	flag.Parse()

	ctrl.SetLogger(zap.New(zap.UseFlagOptions(&opts)))

	mgr, err := ctrl.NewManager(ctrl.GetConfigOrDie(), ctrl.Options{
		Scheme: scheme,
		Metrics: server.Options{
			BindAddress: metricsAddr,
		},
		WebhookServer:          webhook.NewServer(webhook.Options{Port: 9443}),
		HealthProbeBindAddress: probeAddr,
		LeaderElection:         enableLeaderElection,
		LeaderElectionID:       "80807133.tutorial.kubebuilder.io",
	})
	if err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to start manager")
		os.Exit(1)
	}

Note that the Manager can restrict the namespace that all controllers will watch for resources by:

	mgr, err := ctrl.NewManager(ctrl.GetConfigOrDie(), ctrl.Options{
		Scheme: scheme,
		Cache: cache.Options{
			DefaultNamespaces: map[string]cache.Config{
				namespace: {},
			},
		},
		Metrics: server.Options{
			BindAddress: metricsAddr,
		},
		WebhookServer:          webhook.NewServer(webhook.Options{Port: 9443}),
		HealthProbeBindAddress: probeAddr,
		LeaderElection:         enableLeaderElection,
		LeaderElectionID:       "80807133.tutorial.kubebuilder.io",
	})

The above example will change the scope of your project to a single Namespace. In this scenario, it is also suggested to restrict the provided authorization to this namespace by replacing the default ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding to Role and RoleBinding respectively. For further information see the Kubernetes documentation about Using RBAC Authorization.

Also, it is possible to use the DefaultNamespaces from cache.Options{} to cache objects in a specific set of namespaces:

	var namespaces []string // List of Namespaces
	defaultNamespaces := make(map[string]cache.Config)

	for _, ns := range namespaces {
		defaultNamespaces[ns] = cache.Config{}
	}

	mgr, err := ctrl.NewManager(ctrl.GetConfigOrDie(), ctrl.Options{
		Scheme: scheme,
		Cache: cache.Options{
			DefaultNamespaces: defaultNamespaces,
		},
		Metrics: server.Options{
			BindAddress: metricsAddr,
		},
		WebhookServer:          webhook.NewServer(webhook.Options{Port: 9443}),
		HealthProbeBindAddress: probeAddr,
		LeaderElection:         enableLeaderElection,
		LeaderElectionID:       "80807133.tutorial.kubebuilder.io",
	})

For further information see cache.Options{}

	// +kubebuilder:scaffold:builder

	if err := mgr.AddHealthzCheck("healthz", healthz.Ping); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to set up health check")
		os.Exit(1)
	}
	if err := mgr.AddReadyzCheck("readyz", healthz.Ping); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to set up ready check")
		os.Exit(1)
	}

	setupLog.Info("starting manager")
	if err := mgr.Start(ctrl.SetupSignalHandler()); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "problem running manager")
		os.Exit(1)
	}
}

With that out of the way, we can get on to scaffolding our API!

Groups and Versions and Kinds, oh my!

Actually, before we get started with our API, we should talk terminology a bit.

When we talk about APIs in Kubernetes, we often use 4 terms: groups, versions, kinds, and resources.

Groups and Versions

An API Group in Kubernetes is simply a collection of related functionality. Each group has one or more versions, which, as the name suggests, allow us to change how an API works over time.

Kinds and Resources

Each API group-version contains one or more API types, which we call Kinds. While a Kind may change forms between versions, each form must be able to store all the data of the other forms, somehow (we can store the data in fields, or in annotations). This means that using an older API version won’t cause newer data to be lost or corrupted. See the Kubernetes API guidelines for more information.

You’ll also hear mention of resources on occasion. A resource is simply a use of a Kind in the API. Often, there’s a one-to-one mapping between Kinds and resources. For instance, the pods resource corresponds to the Pod Kind. However, sometimes, the same Kind may be returned by multiple resources. For instance, the Scale Kind is returned by all scale subresources, like deployments/scale or replicasets/scale. This is what allows the Kubernetes HorizontalPodAutoscaler to interact with different resources. With CRDs, however, each Kind will correspond to a single resource.

Notice that resources are always lowercase, and by convention are the lowercase form of the Kind.

So, how does that correspond to Go?

When we refer to a kind in a particular group-version, we’ll call it a GroupVersionKind, or GVK for short. Same with resources and GVR. As we’ll see shortly, each GVK corresponds to a given root Go type in a package.

Now that we have our terminology straight, we can actually create our API!

So, how can we create our API?

In the next section, Adding a new API, we will check how the tool helps us to create our own APIs with the command kubebuilder create api.

The goal of this command is to create Custom Resource (CR) and Custom Resource Definition (CRD) for our Kind(s). To check it further see; Extend the Kubernetes API with CustomResourceDefinitions.

But, why create APIs at all?

New APIs are how we teach Kubernetes about our custom objects. The Go structs are used to generate a CRD which includes the schema for our data as well as tracking data like what our new type is called. We can then create instances of our custom objects which will be managed by our controllers.

Our APIs and resources represent our solutions on the clusters. Basically, the CRDs are a definition of our customized Objects, and the CRs are an instance of it.

Ah, do you have an example?

Let’s think about the classic scenario where the goal is to have an application and its database running on the platform with Kubernetes. Then, one CRD could represent the App, and another one could represent the DB. By having one CRD to describe the App and another one for the DB, we will not be hurting concepts such as encapsulation, the single responsibility principle, and cohesion. Damaging these concepts could cause unexpected side effects, such as difficulty in extending, reuse, or maintenance, just to mention a few.

In this way, we can create the App CRD which will have its controller and which would be responsible for things like creating Deployments that contain the App and creating Services to access it and etc. Similarly, we could create a CRD to represent the DB, and deploy a controller that would manage DB instances.

Err, but what’s that Scheme thing?

The Scheme we saw before is simply a way to keep track of what Go type corresponds to a given GVK (don’t be overwhelmed by its godocs).

For instance, suppose we mark the "tutorial.kubebuilder.io/api/v1".CronJob{} type as being in the batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/v1 API group (implicitly saying it has the Kind CronJob).

Then, we can later construct a new &CronJob{} given some JSON from the API server that says

{
    "kind": "CronJob",
    "apiVersion": "batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/v1",
    ...
}

or properly look up the group-version when we go to submit a &CronJob{} in an update.

Adding a new API

To scaffold out a new Kind (you were paying attention to the last chapter, right?) and corresponding controller, we can use kubebuilder create api:

kubebuilder create api --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob

Press y for “Create Resource” and “Create Controller”.

The first time we call this command for each group-version, it will create a directory for the new group-version.

In this case, the api/v1/ directory is created, corresponding to the batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/v1 (remember our --domain setting from the beginning?).

It has also added a file for our CronJob Kind, api/v1/cronjob_types.go. Each time we call the command with a different kind, it’ll add a corresponding new file.

Let’s take a look at what we’ve been given out of the box, then we can move on to filling it out.

emptyapi.go
Apache License

Copyright 2022.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

We start out simply enough: we import the meta/v1 API group, which is not normally exposed by itself, but instead contains metadata common to all Kubernetes Kinds.

package v1

import (
	metav1 "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1"
)

Next, we define types for the Spec and Status of our Kind. Kubernetes functions by reconciling desired state (Spec) with actual cluster state (other objects’ Status) and external state, and then recording what it observed (Status). Thus, every functional object includes spec and status. A few types, like ConfigMap don’t follow this pattern, since they don’t encode desired state, but most types do.

// EDIT THIS FILE!  THIS IS SCAFFOLDING FOR YOU TO OWN!
// NOTE: json tags are required.  Any new fields you add must have json tags for the fields to be serialized.

// CronJobSpec defines the desired state of CronJob
type CronJobSpec struct {
	// INSERT ADDITIONAL SPEC FIELDS - desired state of cluster
	// Important: Run "make" to regenerate code after modifying this file
}

// CronJobStatus defines the observed state of CronJob
type CronJobStatus struct {
	// INSERT ADDITIONAL STATUS FIELD - define observed state of cluster
	// Important: Run "make" to regenerate code after modifying this file
}

Next, we define the types corresponding to actual Kinds, CronJob and CronJobList. CronJob is our root type, and describes the CronJob kind. Like all Kubernetes objects, it contains TypeMeta (which describes API version and Kind), and also contains ObjectMeta, which holds things like name, namespace, and labels.

CronJobList is simply a container for multiple CronJobs. It’s the Kind used in bulk operations, like LIST.

In general, we never modify either of these – all modifications go in either Spec or Status.

That little +kubebuilder:object:root comment is called a marker. We’ll see more of them in a bit, but know that they act as extra metadata, telling controller-tools (our code and YAML generator) extra information. This particular one tells the object generator that this type represents a Kind. Then, the object generator generates an implementation of the runtime.Object interface for us, which is the standard interface that all types representing Kinds must implement.

//+kubebuilder:object:root=true
//+kubebuilder:subresource:status

// CronJob is the Schema for the cronjobs API
type CronJob struct {
	metav1.TypeMeta   `json:",inline"`
	metav1.ObjectMeta `json:"metadata,omitempty"`

	Spec   CronJobSpec   `json:"spec,omitempty"`
	Status CronJobStatus `json:"status,omitempty"`
}

//+kubebuilder:object:root=true

// CronJobList contains a list of CronJob
type CronJobList struct {
	metav1.TypeMeta `json:",inline"`
	metav1.ListMeta `json:"metadata,omitempty"`
	Items           []CronJob `json:"items"`
}

Finally, we add the Go types to the API group. This allows us to add the types in this API group to any Scheme.

func init() {
	SchemeBuilder.Register(&CronJob{}, &CronJobList{})
}

Now that we’ve seen the basic structure, let’s fill it out!

Designing an API

In Kubernetes, we have a few rules for how we design APIs. Namely, all serialized fields must be camelCase, so we use JSON struct tags to specify this. We can also use the omitempty struct tag to mark that a field should be omitted from serialization when empty.

Fields may use most of the primitive types. Numbers are the exception: for API compatibility purposes, we accept three forms of numbers: int32 and int64 for integers, and resource.Quantity for decimals.

Hold up, what's a Quantity?

Quantities are a special notation for decimal numbers that have an explicitly fixed representation that makes them more portable across machines. You’ve probably noticed them when specifying resources requests and limits on pods in Kubernetes.

They conceptually work similar to floating point numbers: they have a significant, base, and exponent. Their serializable and human readable format uses whole numbers and suffixes to specify values much the way we describe computer storage.

For instance, the value 2m means 0.002 in decimal notation. 2Ki means 2048 in decimal, while 2K means 2000 in decimal. If we want to specify fractions, we switch to a suffix that lets us use a whole number: 2.5 is 2500m.

There are two supported bases: 10 and 2 (called decimal and binary, respectively). Decimal base is indicated with “normal” SI suffixes (e.g. M and K), while Binary base is specified in “mebi” notation (e.g. Mi and Ki). Think megabytes vs mebibytes.

There’s one other special type that we use: metav1.Time. This functions identically to time.Time, except that it has a fixed, portable serialization format.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at what our CronJob object looks like!

project/api/v1/cronjob_types.go
Apache License

Copyright 2024 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

package v1
Imports
import (
	batchv1 "k8s.io/api/batch/v1"
	corev1 "k8s.io/api/core/v1"
	metav1 "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1"
)

// EDIT THIS FILE!  THIS IS SCAFFOLDING FOR YOU TO OWN!
// NOTE: json tags are required.  Any new fields you add must have json tags for the fields to be serialized.

First, let’s take a look at our spec. As we discussed before, spec holds desired state, so any “inputs” to our controller go here.

Fundamentally a CronJob needs the following pieces:

  • A schedule (the cron in CronJob)
  • A template for the Job to run (the job in CronJob)

We’ll also want a few extras, which will make our users’ lives easier:

  • A deadline for starting jobs (if we miss this deadline, we’ll just wait till the next scheduled time)
  • What to do if multiple jobs would run at once (do we wait? stop the old one? run both?)
  • A way to pause the running of a CronJob, in case something’s wrong with it
  • Limits on old job history

Remember, since we never read our own status, we need to have some other way to keep track of whether a job has run. We can use at least one old job to do this.

We’ll use several markers (// +comment) to specify additional metadata. These will be used by controller-tools when generating our CRD manifest. As we’ll see in a bit, controller-tools will also use GoDoc to form descriptions for the fields.

// CronJobSpec defines the desired state of CronJob
type CronJobSpec struct {
	//+kubebuilder:validation:MinLength=0

	// The schedule in Cron format, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron.
	Schedule string `json:"schedule"`

	//+kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=0

	// Optional deadline in seconds for starting the job if it misses scheduled
	// time for any reason.  Missed jobs executions will be counted as failed ones.
	// +optional
	StartingDeadlineSeconds *int64 `json:"startingDeadlineSeconds,omitempty"`

	// Specifies how to treat concurrent executions of a Job.
	// Valid values are:
	// - "Allow" (default): allows CronJobs to run concurrently;
	// - "Forbid": forbids concurrent runs, skipping next run if previous run hasn't finished yet;
	// - "Replace": cancels currently running job and replaces it with a new one
	// +optional
	ConcurrencyPolicy ConcurrencyPolicy `json:"concurrencyPolicy,omitempty"`

	// This flag tells the controller to suspend subsequent executions, it does
	// not apply to already started executions.  Defaults to false.
	// +optional
	Suspend *bool `json:"suspend,omitempty"`

	// Specifies the job that will be created when executing a CronJob.
	JobTemplate batchv1.JobTemplateSpec `json:"jobTemplate"`

	//+kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=0

	// The number of successful finished jobs to retain.
	// This is a pointer to distinguish between explicit zero and not specified.
	// +optional
	SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit *int32 `json:"successfulJobsHistoryLimit,omitempty"`

	//+kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=0

	// The number of failed finished jobs to retain.
	// This is a pointer to distinguish between explicit zero and not specified.
	// +optional
	FailedJobsHistoryLimit *int32 `json:"failedJobsHistoryLimit,omitempty"`
}

We define a custom type to hold our concurrency policy. It’s actually just a string under the hood, but the type gives extra documentation, and allows us to attach validation on the type instead of the field, making the validation more easily reusable.

// ConcurrencyPolicy describes how the job will be handled.
// Only one of the following concurrent policies may be specified.
// If none of the following policies is specified, the default one
// is AllowConcurrent.
// +kubebuilder:validation:Enum=Allow;Forbid;Replace
type ConcurrencyPolicy string

const (
	// AllowConcurrent allows CronJobs to run concurrently.
	AllowConcurrent ConcurrencyPolicy = "Allow"

	// ForbidConcurrent forbids concurrent runs, skipping next run if previous
	// hasn't finished yet.
	ForbidConcurrent ConcurrencyPolicy = "Forbid"

	// ReplaceConcurrent cancels currently running job and replaces it with a new one.
	ReplaceConcurrent ConcurrencyPolicy = "Replace"
)

Next, let’s design our status, which holds observed state. It contains any information we want users or other controllers to be able to easily obtain.

We’ll keep a list of actively running jobs, as well as the last time that we successfully ran our job. Notice that we use metav1.Time instead of time.Time to get the stable serialization, as mentioned above.

// CronJobStatus defines the observed state of CronJob
type CronJobStatus struct {
	// INSERT ADDITIONAL STATUS FIELD - define observed state of cluster
	// Important: Run "make" to regenerate code after modifying this file

	// A list of pointers to currently running jobs.
	// +optional
	Active []corev1.ObjectReference `json:"active,omitempty"`

	// Information when was the last time the job was successfully scheduled.
	// +optional
	LastScheduleTime *metav1.Time `json:"lastScheduleTime,omitempty"`
}

Finally, we have the rest of the boilerplate that we’ve already discussed. As previously noted, we don’t need to change this, except to mark that we want a status subresource, so that we behave like built-in kubernetes types.

//+kubebuilder:object:root=true
//+kubebuilder:subresource:status

// CronJob is the Schema for the cronjobs API
type CronJob struct {
Root Object Definitions
	metav1.TypeMeta   `json:",inline"`
	metav1.ObjectMeta `json:"metadata,omitempty"`

	Spec   CronJobSpec   `json:"spec,omitempty"`
	Status CronJobStatus `json:"status,omitempty"`
}

//+kubebuilder:object:root=true

// CronJobList contains a list of CronJob
type CronJobList struct {
	metav1.TypeMeta `json:",inline"`
	metav1.ListMeta `json:"metadata,omitempty"`
	Items           []CronJob `json:"items"`
}

func init() {
	SchemeBuilder.Register(&CronJob{}, &CronJobList{})
}

Now that we have an API, we’ll need to write a controller to actually implement the functionality.

A Brief Aside: What’s the rest of this stuff?

If you’ve taken a peek at the rest of the files in the api/v1/ directory, you might have noticed two additional files beyond cronjob_types.go: groupversion_info.go and zz_generated.deepcopy.go.

Neither of these files ever needs to be edited (the former stays the same and the latter is autogenerated), but it’s useful to know what’s in them.

groupversion_info.go

groupversion_info.go contains common metadata about the group-version:

project/api/v1/groupversion_info.go
Apache License

Copyright 2024 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

First, we have some package-level markers that denote that there are Kubernetes objects in this package, and that this package represents the group batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io. The object generator makes use of the former, while the latter is used by the CRD generator to generate the right metadata for the CRDs it creates from this package.

// Package v1 contains API Schema definitions for the batch v1 API group
// +kubebuilder:object:generate=true
// +groupName=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io
package v1

import (
	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime/schema"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/scheme"
)

Then, we have the commonly useful variables that help us set up our Scheme. Since we need to use all the types in this package in our controller, it’s helpful (and the convention) to have a convenient method to add all the types to some other Scheme. SchemeBuilder makes this easy for us.

var (
	// GroupVersion is group version used to register these objects
	GroupVersion = schema.GroupVersion{Group: "batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io", Version: "v1"}

	// SchemeBuilder is used to add go types to the GroupVersionKind scheme
	SchemeBuilder = &scheme.Builder{GroupVersion: GroupVersion}

	// AddToScheme adds the types in this group-version to the given scheme.
	AddToScheme = SchemeBuilder.AddToScheme
)

zz_generated.deepcopy.go

zz_generated.deepcopy.go contains the autogenerated implementation of the aforementioned runtime.Object interface, which marks all of our root types as representing Kinds.

The core of the runtime.Object interface is a deep-copy method, DeepCopyObject.

The object generator in controller-tools also generates two other handy methods for each root type and all its sub-types: DeepCopy and DeepCopyInto.

What’s in a controller?

Controllers are the core of Kubernetes, and of any operator.

It’s a controller’s job to ensure that, for any given object, the actual state of the world (both the cluster state, and potentially external state like running containers for Kubelet or loadbalancers for a cloud provider) matches the desired state in the object. Each controller focuses on one root Kind, but may interact with other Kinds.

We call this process reconciling.

In controller-runtime, the logic that implements the reconciling for a specific kind is called a Reconciler. A reconciler takes the name of an object, and returns whether or not we need to try again (e.g. in case of errors or periodic controllers, like the HorizontalPodAutoscaler).

emptycontroller.go
Apache License

Copyright 2022.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

First, we start out with some standard imports. As before, we need the core controller-runtime library, as well as the client package, and the package for our API types.

package controllers

import (
	"context"

	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime"
	ctrl "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/client"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/log"

	batchv1 "tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/api/v1"
)

Next, kubebuilder has scaffolded a basic reconciler struct for us. Pretty much every reconciler needs to log, and needs to be able to fetch objects, so these are added out of the box.

// CronJobReconciler reconciles a CronJob object
type CronJobReconciler struct {
	client.Client
	Scheme *runtime.Scheme
}

Most controllers eventually end up running on the cluster, so they need RBAC permissions, which we specify using controller-tools RBAC markers. These are the bare minimum permissions needed to run. As we add more functionality, we’ll need to revisit these.

// +kubebuilder:rbac:groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs,verbs=get;list;watch;create;update;patch;delete
// +kubebuilder:rbac:groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs/status,verbs=get;update;patch

The ClusterRole manifest at config/rbac/role.yaml is generated from the above markers via controller-gen with the following command:

// make manifests

NOTE: If you receive an error, please run the specified command in the error and re-run make manifests.

Reconcile actually performs the reconciling for a single named object. Our Request just has a name, but we can use the client to fetch that object from the cache.

We return an empty result and no error, which indicates to controller-runtime that we’ve successfully reconciled this object and don’t need to try again until there’s some changes.

Most controllers need a logging handle and a context, so we set them up here.

The context is used to allow cancelation of requests, and potentially things like tracing. It’s the first argument to all client methods. The Background context is just a basic context without any extra data or timing restrictions.

The logging handle lets us log. controller-runtime uses structured logging through a library called logr. As we’ll see shortly, logging works by attaching key-value pairs to a static message. We can pre-assign some pairs at the top of our reconcile method to have those attached to all log lines in this reconciler.

func (r *CronJobReconciler) Reconcile(ctx context.Context, req ctrl.Request) (ctrl.Result, error) {
	_ = log.FromContext(ctx)

	// your logic here

	return ctrl.Result{}, nil
}

Finally, we add this reconciler to the manager, so that it gets started when the manager is started.

For now, we just note that this reconciler operates on CronJobs. Later, we’ll use this to mark that we care about related objects as well.

func (r *CronJobReconciler) SetupWithManager(mgr ctrl.Manager) error {
	return ctrl.NewControllerManagedBy(mgr).
		For(&batchv1.CronJob{}).
		Complete(r)
}

Now that we’ve seen the basic structure of a reconciler, let’s fill out the logic for CronJobs.

Implementing a controller

The basic logic of our CronJob controller is this:

  1. Load the named CronJob

  2. List all active jobs, and update the status

  3. Clean up old jobs according to the history limits

  4. Check if we’re suspended (and don’t do anything else if we are)

  5. Get the next scheduled run

  6. Run a new job if it’s on schedule, not past the deadline, and not blocked by our concurrency policy

  7. Requeue when we either see a running job (done automatically) or it’s time for the next scheduled run.

project/internal/controller/cronjob_controller.go
Apache License

Copyright 2024 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

We’ll start out with some imports. You’ll see below that we’ll need a few more imports than those scaffolded for us. We’ll talk about each one when we use it.

package controller

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"sort"
	"time"

	"github.com/robfig/cron"
	kbatch "k8s.io/api/batch/v1"
	corev1 "k8s.io/api/core/v1"
	metav1 "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1"
	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime"
	ref "k8s.io/client-go/tools/reference"
	ctrl "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/client"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/log"

	batchv1 "tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/api/v1"
)

Next, we’ll need a Clock, which will allow us to fake timing in our tests.

// CronJobReconciler reconciles a CronJob object
type CronJobReconciler struct {
	client.Client
	Scheme *runtime.Scheme
	Clock
}
Clock

We’ll mock out the clock to make it easier to jump around in time while testing, the “real” clock just calls time.Now.

type realClock struct{}

func (_ realClock) Now() time.Time { return time.Now() }

// Clock knows how to get the current time.
// It can be used to fake out timing for testing.
type Clock interface {
	Now() time.Time
}

Notice that we need a few more RBAC permissions – since we’re creating and managing jobs now, we’ll need permissions for those, which means adding a couple more markers.

//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs,verbs=get;list;watch;create;update;patch;delete
//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs/status,verbs=get;update;patch
//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs/finalizers,verbs=update
//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=batch,resources=jobs,verbs=get;list;watch;create;update;patch;delete
//+kubebuilder:rbac:groups=batch,resources=jobs/status,verbs=get

Now, we get to the heart of the controller – the reconciler logic.

var (
	scheduledTimeAnnotation = "batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/scheduled-at"
)

// Reconcile is part of the main kubernetes reconciliation loop which aims to
// move the current state of the cluster closer to the desired state.
// TODO(user): Modify the Reconcile function to compare the state specified by
// the CronJob object against the actual cluster state, and then
// perform operations to make the cluster state reflect the state specified by
// the user.
//
// For more details, check Reconcile and its Result here:
// - https://pkg.go.dev/sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime@v0.17.0/pkg/reconcile
func (r *CronJobReconciler) Reconcile(ctx context.Context, req ctrl.Request) (ctrl.Result, error) {
	log := log.FromContext(ctx)

1: Load the CronJob by name

We’ll fetch the CronJob using our client. All client methods take a context (to allow for cancellation) as their first argument, and the object in question as their last. Get is a bit special, in that it takes a NamespacedName as the middle argument (most don’t have a middle argument, as we’ll see below).

Many client methods also take variadic options at the end.

	var cronJob batchv1.CronJob
	if err := r.Get(ctx, req.NamespacedName, &cronJob); err != nil {
		log.Error(err, "unable to fetch CronJob")
		// we'll ignore not-found errors, since they can't be fixed by an immediate
		// requeue (we'll need to wait for a new notification), and we can get them
		// on deleted requests.
		return ctrl.Result{}, client.IgnoreNotFound(err)
	}

2: List all active jobs, and update the status

To fully update our status, we’ll need to list all child jobs in this namespace that belong to this CronJob. Similarly to Get, we can use the List method to list the child jobs. Notice that we use variadic options to set the namespace and field match (which is actually an index lookup that we set up below).

	var childJobs kbatch.JobList
	if err := r.List(ctx, &childJobs, client.InNamespace(req.Namespace), client.MatchingFields{jobOwnerKey: req.Name}); err != nil {
		log.Error(err, "unable to list child Jobs")
		return ctrl.Result{}, err
	}

Once we have all the jobs we own, we’ll split them into active, successful, and failed jobs, keeping track of the most recent run so that we can record it in status. Remember, status should be able to be reconstituted from the state of the world, so it’s generally not a good idea to read from the status of the root object. Instead, you should reconstruct it every run. That’s what we’ll do here.

We can check if a job is “finished” and whether it succeeded or failed using status conditions. We’ll put that logic in a helper to make our code cleaner.

	// find the active list of jobs
	var activeJobs []*kbatch.Job
	var successfulJobs []*kbatch.Job
	var failedJobs []*kbatch.Job
	var mostRecentTime *time.Time // find the last run so we can update the status
isJobFinished

We consider a job “finished” if it has a “Complete” or “Failed” condition marked as true. Status conditions allow us to add extensible status information to our objects that other humans and controllers can examine to check things like completion and health.

	isJobFinished := func(job *kbatch.Job) (bool, kbatch.JobConditionType) {
		for _, c := range job.Status.Conditions {
			if (c.Type == kbatch.JobComplete || c.Type == kbatch.JobFailed) && c.Status == corev1.ConditionTrue {
				return true, c.Type
			}
		}

		return false, ""
	}
getScheduledTimeForJob

We’ll use a helper to extract the scheduled time from the annotation that we added during job creation.

	getScheduledTimeForJob := func(job *kbatch.Job) (*time.Time, error) {
		timeRaw := job.Annotations[scheduledTimeAnnotation]
		if len(timeRaw) == 0 {
			return nil, nil
		}

		timeParsed, err := time.Parse(time.RFC3339, timeRaw)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, err
		}
		return &timeParsed, nil
	}
	for i, job := range childJobs.Items {
		_, finishedType := isJobFinished(&job)
		switch finishedType {
		case "": // ongoing
			activeJobs = append(activeJobs, &childJobs.Items[i])
		case kbatch.JobFailed:
			failedJobs = append(failedJobs, &childJobs.Items[i])
		case kbatch.JobComplete:
			successfulJobs = append(successfulJobs, &childJobs.Items[i])
		}

		// We'll store the launch time in an annotation, so we'll reconstitute that from
		// the active jobs themselves.
		scheduledTimeForJob, err := getScheduledTimeForJob(&job)
		if err != nil {
			log.Error(err, "unable to parse schedule time for child job", "job", &job)
			continue
		}
		if scheduledTimeForJob != nil {
			if mostRecentTime == nil || mostRecentTime.Before(*scheduledTimeForJob) {
				mostRecentTime = scheduledTimeForJob
			}
		}
	}

	if mostRecentTime != nil {
		cronJob.Status.LastScheduleTime = &metav1.Time{Time: *mostRecentTime}
	} else {
		cronJob.Status.LastScheduleTime = nil
	}
	cronJob.Status.Active = nil
	for _, activeJob := range activeJobs {
		jobRef, err := ref.GetReference(r.Scheme, activeJob)
		if err != nil {
			log.Error(err, "unable to make reference to active job", "job", activeJob)
			continue
		}
		cronJob.Status.Active = append(cronJob.Status.Active, *jobRef)
	}

Here, we’ll log how many jobs we observed at a slightly higher logging level, for debugging. Notice how instead of using a format string, we use a fixed message, and attach key-value pairs with the extra information. This makes it easier to filter and query log lines.

	log.V(1).Info("job count", "active jobs", len(activeJobs), "successful jobs", len(successfulJobs), "failed jobs", len(failedJobs))

Using the data we’ve gathered, we’ll update the status of our CRD. Just like before, we use our client. To specifically update the status subresource, we’ll use the Status part of the client, with the Update method.

The status subresource ignores changes to spec, so it’s less likely to conflict with any other updates, and can have separate permissions.

	if err := r.Status().Update(ctx, &cronJob); err != nil {
		log.Error(err, "unable to update CronJob status")
		return ctrl.Result{}, err
	}

Once we’ve updated our status, we can move on to ensuring that the status of the world matches what we want in our spec.

3: Clean up old jobs according to the history limit

First, we’ll try to clean up old jobs, so that we don’t leave too many lying around.

	// NB: deleting these are "best effort" -- if we fail on a particular one,
	// we won't requeue just to finish the deleting.
	if cronJob.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit != nil {
		sort.Slice(failedJobs, func(i, j int) bool {
			if failedJobs[i].Status.StartTime == nil {
				return failedJobs[j].Status.StartTime != nil
			}
			return failedJobs[i].Status.StartTime.Before(failedJobs[j].Status.StartTime)
		})
		for i, job := range failedJobs {
			if int32(i) >= int32(len(failedJobs))-*cronJob.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit {
				break
			}
			if err := r.Delete(ctx, job, client.PropagationPolicy(metav1.DeletePropagationBackground)); client.IgnoreNotFound(err) != nil {
				log.Error(err, "unable to delete old failed job", "job", job)
			} else {
				log.V(0).Info("deleted old failed job", "job", job)
			}
		}
	}

	if cronJob.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit != nil {
		sort.Slice(successfulJobs, func(i, j int) bool {
			if successfulJobs[i].Status.StartTime == nil {
				return successfulJobs[j].Status.StartTime != nil
			}
			return successfulJobs[i].Status.StartTime.Before(successfulJobs[j].Status.StartTime)
		})
		for i, job := range successfulJobs {
			if int32(i) >= int32(len(successfulJobs))-*cronJob.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit {
				break
			}
			if err := r.Delete(ctx, job, client.PropagationPolicy(metav1.DeletePropagationBackground)); err != nil {
				log.Error(err, "unable to delete old successful job", "job", job)
			} else {
				log.V(0).Info("deleted old successful job", "job", job)
			}
		}
	}

4: Check if we’re suspended

If this object is suspended, we don’t want to run any jobs, so we’ll stop now. This is useful if something’s broken with the job we’re running and we want to pause runs to investigate or putz with the cluster, without deleting the object.

	if cronJob.Spec.Suspend != nil && *cronJob.Spec.Suspend {
		log.V(1).Info("cronjob suspended, skipping")
		return ctrl.Result{}, nil
	}

5: Get the next scheduled run

If we’re not paused, we’ll need to calculate the next scheduled run, and whether or not we’ve got a run that we haven’t processed yet.

getNextSchedule

We’ll calculate the next scheduled time using our helpful cron library. We’ll start calculating appropriate times from our last run, or the creation of the CronJob if we can’t find a last run.

If there are too many missed runs and we don’t have any deadlines set, we’ll bail so that we don’t cause issues on controller restarts or wedges.

Otherwise, we’ll just return the missed runs (of which we’ll just use the latest), and the next run, so that we can know when it’s time to reconcile again.

	getNextSchedule := func(cronJob *batchv1.CronJob, now time.Time) (lastMissed time.Time, next time.Time, err error) {
		sched, err := cron.ParseStandard(cronJob.Spec.Schedule)
		if err != nil {
			return time.Time{}, time.Time{}, fmt.Errorf("Unparseable schedule %q: %v", cronJob.Spec.Schedule, err)
		}

		// for optimization purposes, cheat a bit and start from our last observed run time
		// we could reconstitute this here, but there's not much point, since we've
		// just updated it.
		var earliestTime time.Time
		if cronJob.Status.LastScheduleTime != nil {
			earliestTime = cronJob.Status.LastScheduleTime.Time
		} else {
			earliestTime = cronJob.ObjectMeta.CreationTimestamp.Time
		}
		if cronJob.Spec.StartingDeadlineSeconds != nil {
			// controller is not going to schedule anything below this point
			schedulingDeadline := now.Add(-time.Second * time.Duration(*cronJob.Spec.StartingDeadlineSeconds))

			if schedulingDeadline.After(earliestTime) {
				earliestTime = schedulingDeadline
			}
		}
		if earliestTime.After(now) {
			return time.Time{}, sched.Next(now), nil
		}

		starts := 0
		for t := sched.Next(earliestTime); !t.After(now); t = sched.Next(t) {
			lastMissed = t
			// An object might miss several starts. For example, if
			// controller gets wedged on Friday at 5:01pm when everyone has
			// gone home, and someone comes in on Tuesday AM and discovers
			// the problem and restarts the controller, then all the hourly
			// jobs, more than 80 of them for one hourly scheduledJob, should
			// all start running with no further intervention (if the scheduledJob
			// allows concurrency and late starts).
			//
			// However, if there is a bug somewhere, or incorrect clock
			// on controller's server or apiservers (for setting creationTimestamp)
			// then there could be so many missed start times (it could be off
			// by decades or more), that it would eat up all the CPU and memory
			// of this controller. In that case, we want to not try to list
			// all the missed start times.
			starts++
			if starts > 100 {
				// We can't get the most recent times so just return an empty slice
				return time.Time{}, time.Time{}, fmt.Errorf("Too many missed start times (> 100). Set or decrease .spec.startingDeadlineSeconds or check clock skew.")
			}
		}
		return lastMissed, sched.Next(now), nil
	}
	// figure out the next times that we need to create
	// jobs at (or anything we missed).
	missedRun, nextRun, err := getNextSchedule(&cronJob, r.Now())
	if err != nil {
		log.Error(err, "unable to figure out CronJob schedule")
		// we don't really care about requeuing until we get an update that
		// fixes the schedule, so don't return an error
		return ctrl.Result{}, nil
	}

We’ll prep our eventual request to requeue until the next job, and then figure out if we actually need to run.

	scheduledResult := ctrl.Result{RequeueAfter: nextRun.Sub(r.Now())} // save this so we can re-use it elsewhere
	log = log.WithValues("now", r.Now(), "next run", nextRun)

6: Run a new job if it’s on schedule, not past the deadline, and not blocked by our concurrency policy

If we’ve missed a run, and we’re still within the deadline to start it, we’ll need to run a job.

	if missedRun.IsZero() {
		log.V(1).Info("no upcoming scheduled times, sleeping until next")
		return scheduledResult, nil
	}

	// make sure we're not too late to start the run
	log = log.WithValues("current run", missedRun)
	tooLate := false
	if cronJob.Spec.StartingDeadlineSeconds != nil {
		tooLate = missedRun.Add(time.Duration(*cronJob.Spec.StartingDeadlineSeconds) * time.Second).Before(r.Now())
	}
	if tooLate {
		log.V(1).Info("missed starting deadline for last run, sleeping till next")
		// TODO(directxman12): events
		return scheduledResult, nil
	}

If we actually have to run a job, we’ll need to either wait till existing ones finish, replace the existing ones, or just add new ones. If our information is out of date due to cache delay, we’ll get a requeue when we get up-to-date information.

	// figure out how to run this job -- concurrency policy might forbid us from running
	// multiple at the same time...
	if cronJob.Spec.ConcurrencyPolicy == batchv1.ForbidConcurrent && len(activeJobs) > 0 {
		log.V(1).Info("concurrency policy blocks concurrent runs, skipping", "num active", len(activeJobs))
		return scheduledResult, nil
	}

	// ...or instruct us to replace existing ones...
	if cronJob.Spec.ConcurrencyPolicy == batchv1.ReplaceConcurrent {
		for _, activeJob := range activeJobs {
			// we don't care if the job was already deleted
			if err := r.Delete(ctx, activeJob, client.PropagationPolicy(metav1.DeletePropagationBackground)); client.IgnoreNotFound(err) != nil {
				log.Error(err, "unable to delete active job", "job", activeJob)
				return ctrl.Result{}, err
			}
		}
	}

Once we’ve figured out what to do with existing jobs, we’ll actually create our desired job

constructJobForCronJob

We need to construct a job based on our CronJob’s template. We’ll copy over the spec from the template and copy some basic object meta.

Then, we’ll set the “scheduled time” annotation so that we can reconstitute our LastScheduleTime field each reconcile.

Finally, we’ll need to set an owner reference. This allows the Kubernetes garbage collector to clean up jobs when we delete the CronJob, and allows controller-runtime to figure out which cronjob needs to be reconciled when a given job changes (is added, deleted, completes, etc).

	constructJobForCronJob := func(cronJob *batchv1.CronJob, scheduledTime time.Time) (*kbatch.Job, error) {
		// We want job names for a given nominal start time to have a deterministic name to avoid the same job being created twice
		name := fmt.Sprintf("%s-%d", cronJob.Name, scheduledTime.Unix())

		job := &kbatch.Job{
			ObjectMeta: metav1.ObjectMeta{
				Labels:      make(map[string]string),
				Annotations: make(map[string]string),
				Name:        name,
				Namespace:   cronJob.Namespace,
			},
			Spec: *cronJob.Spec.JobTemplate.Spec.DeepCopy(),
		}
		for k, v := range cronJob.Spec.JobTemplate.Annotations {
			job.Annotations[k] = v
		}
		job.Annotations[scheduledTimeAnnotation] = scheduledTime.Format(time.RFC3339)
		for k, v := range cronJob.Spec.JobTemplate.Labels {
			job.Labels[k] = v
		}
		if err := ctrl.SetControllerReference(cronJob, job, r.Scheme); err != nil {
			return nil, err
		}

		return job, nil
	}
	// actually make the job...
	job, err := constructJobForCronJob(&cronJob, missedRun)
	if err != nil {
		log.Error(err, "unable to construct job from template")
		// don't bother requeuing until we get a change to the spec
		return scheduledResult, nil
	}

	// ...and create it on the cluster
	if err := r.Create(ctx, job); err != nil {
		log.Error(err, "unable to create Job for CronJob", "job", job)
		return ctrl.Result{}, err
	}

	log.V(1).Info("created Job for CronJob run", "job", job)

7: Requeue when we either see a running job or it’s time for the next scheduled run

Finally, we’ll return the result that we prepped above, that says we want to requeue when our next run would need to occur. This is taken as a maximum deadline – if something else changes in between, like our job starts or finishes, we get modified, etc, we might reconcile again sooner.

	// we'll requeue once we see the running job, and update our status
	return scheduledResult, nil
}

Setup

Finally, we’ll update our setup. In order to allow our reconciler to quickly look up Jobs by their owner, we’ll need an index. We declare an index key that we can later use with the client as a pseudo-field name, and then describe how to extract the indexed value from the Job object. The indexer will automatically take care of namespaces for us, so we just have to extract the owner name if the Job has a CronJob owner.

Additionally, we’ll inform the manager that this controller owns some Jobs, so that it will automatically call Reconcile on the underlying CronJob when a Job changes, is deleted, etc.

var (
	jobOwnerKey = ".metadata.controller"
	apiGVStr    = batchv1.GroupVersion.String()
)

// SetupWithManager sets up the controller with the Manager.
func (r *CronJobReconciler) SetupWithManager(mgr ctrl.Manager) error {
	// set up a real clock, since we're not in a test
	if r.Clock == nil {
		r.Clock = realClock{}
	}

	if err := mgr.GetFieldIndexer().IndexField(context.Background(), &kbatch.Job{}, jobOwnerKey, func(rawObj client.Object) []string {
		// grab the job object, extract the owner...
		job := rawObj.(*kbatch.Job)
		owner := metav1.GetControllerOf(job)
		if owner == nil {
			return nil
		}
		// ...make sure it's a CronJob...
		if owner.APIVersion != apiGVStr || owner.Kind != "CronJob" {
			return nil
		}

		// ...and if so, return it
		return []string{owner.Name}
	}); err != nil {
		return err
	}

	return ctrl.NewControllerManagedBy(mgr).
		For(&batchv1.CronJob{}).
		Owns(&kbatch.Job{}).
		Complete(r)
}

That was a doozy, but now we’ve got a working controller. Let’s test against the cluster, then, if we don’t have any issues, deploy it!

You said something about main?

But first, remember how we said we’d come back to main.go again? Let’s take a look and see what’s changed, and what we need to add.

project/cmd/main.go
Apache License

Copyright 2024 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Imports
package main

import (
	"crypto/tls"
	"flag"
	"os"

	// Import all Kubernetes client auth plugins (e.g. Azure, GCP, OIDC, etc.)
	// to ensure that exec-entrypoint and run can make use of them.
	_ "k8s.io/client-go/plugin/pkg/client/auth"

	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime"
	utilruntime "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/runtime"
	clientgoscheme "k8s.io/client-go/kubernetes/scheme"
	ctrl "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/healthz"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/log/zap"
	metricsserver "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/metrics/server"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/webhook"

	batchv1 "tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/api/v1"
	"tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/internal/controller"
	//+kubebuilder:scaffold:imports
)

The first difference to notice is that kubebuilder has added the new API group’s package (batchv1) to our scheme. This means that we can use those objects in our controller.

If we would be using any other CRD we would have to add their scheme the same way. Builtin types such as Job have their scheme added by clientgoscheme.

var (
	scheme   = runtime.NewScheme()
	setupLog = ctrl.Log.WithName("setup")
)

func init() {
	utilruntime.Must(clientgoscheme.AddToScheme(scheme))

	utilruntime.Must(batchv1.AddToScheme(scheme))
	//+kubebuilder:scaffold:scheme
}

The other thing that’s changed is that kubebuilder has added a block calling our CronJob controller’s SetupWithManager method.

func main() {
old stuff
	var metricsAddr string
	var enableLeaderElection bool
	var probeAddr string
	var secureMetrics bool
	var enableHTTP2 bool
	flag.StringVar(&metricsAddr, "metrics-bind-address", ":8080", "The address the metric endpoint binds to.")
	flag.StringVar(&probeAddr, "health-probe-bind-address", ":8081", "The address the probe endpoint binds to.")
	flag.BoolVar(&enableLeaderElection, "leader-elect", false,
		"Enable leader election for controller manager. "+
			"Enabling this will ensure there is only one active controller manager.")
	flag.BoolVar(&secureMetrics, "metrics-secure", false,
		"If set the metrics endpoint is served securely")
	flag.BoolVar(&enableHTTP2, "enable-http2", false,
		"If set, HTTP/2 will be enabled for the metrics and webhook servers")
	opts := zap.Options{
		Development: true,
	}
	opts.BindFlags(flag.CommandLine)
	flag.Parse()

	ctrl.SetLogger(zap.New(zap.UseFlagOptions(&opts)))

	// if the enable-http2 flag is false (the default), http/2 should be disabled
	// due to its vulnerabilities. More specifically, disabling http/2 will
	// prevent from being vulnerable to the HTTP/2 Stream Cancelation and
	// Rapid Reset CVEs. For more information see:
	// - https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-qppj-fm5r-hxr3
	// - https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-4374-p667-p6c8
	disableHTTP2 := func(c *tls.Config) {
		setupLog.Info("disabling http/2")
		c.NextProtos = []string{"http/1.1"}
	}

	tlsOpts := []func(*tls.Config){}
	if !enableHTTP2 {
		tlsOpts = append(tlsOpts, disableHTTP2)
	}

	webhookServer := webhook.NewServer(webhook.Options{
		TLSOpts: tlsOpts,
	})

	mgr, err := ctrl.NewManager(ctrl.GetConfigOrDie(), ctrl.Options{
		Scheme: scheme,
		Metrics: metricsserver.Options{
			BindAddress:   metricsAddr,
			SecureServing: secureMetrics,
			TLSOpts:       tlsOpts,
		},
		WebhookServer:          webhookServer,
		HealthProbeBindAddress: probeAddr,
		LeaderElection:         enableLeaderElection,
		LeaderElectionID:       "80807133.tutorial.kubebuilder.io",
		// LeaderElectionReleaseOnCancel defines if the leader should step down voluntarily
		// when the Manager ends. This requires the binary to immediately end when the
		// Manager is stopped, otherwise, this setting is unsafe. Setting this significantly
		// speeds up voluntary leader transitions as the new leader don't have to wait
		// LeaseDuration time first.
		//
		// In the default scaffold provided, the program ends immediately after
		// the manager stops, so would be fine to enable this option. However,
		// if you are doing or is intended to do any operation such as perform cleanups
		// after the manager stops then its usage might be unsafe.
		// LeaderElectionReleaseOnCancel: true,
	})
	if err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to start manager")
		os.Exit(1)
	}
	if err = (&controller.CronJobReconciler{
		Client: mgr.GetClient(),
		Scheme: mgr.GetScheme(),
	}).SetupWithManager(mgr); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to create controller", "controller", "CronJob")
		os.Exit(1)
	}
old stuff

We’ll also set up webhooks for our type, which we’ll talk about next. We just need to add them to the manager. Since we might want to run the webhooks separately, or not run them when testing our controller locally, we’ll put them behind an environment variable.

We’ll just make sure to set ENABLE_WEBHOOKS=false when we run locally.

	if os.Getenv("ENABLE_WEBHOOKS") != "false" {
		if err = (&batchv1.CronJob{}).SetupWebhookWithManager(mgr); err != nil {
			setupLog.Error(err, "unable to create webhook", "webhook", "CronJob")
			os.Exit(1)
		}
	}
	//+kubebuilder:scaffold:builder

	if err := mgr.AddHealthzCheck("healthz", healthz.Ping); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to set up health check")
		os.Exit(1)
	}
	if err := mgr.AddReadyzCheck("readyz", healthz.Ping); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to set up ready check")
		os.Exit(1)
	}

	setupLog.Info("starting manager")
	if err := mgr.Start(ctrl.SetupSignalHandler()); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "problem running manager")
		os.Exit(1)
	}
}

Now we can implement our controller.

Implementing defaulting/validating webhooks

If you want to implement admission webhooks for your CRD, the only thing you need to do is to implement the Defaulter and (or) the Validator interface.

Kubebuilder takes care of the rest for you, such as

  1. Creating the webhook server.
  2. Ensuring the server has been added in the manager.
  3. Creating handlers for your webhooks.
  4. Registering each handler with a path in your server.

First, let’s scaffold the webhooks for our CRD (CronJob). We’ll need to run the following command with the --defaulting and --programmatic-validation flags (since our test project will use defaulting and validating webhooks):

kubebuilder create webhook --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob --defaulting --programmatic-validation

This will scaffold the webhook functions and register your webhook with the manager in your main.go for you.

project/api/v1/cronjob_webhook.go
Apache License

Copyright 2024 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Go imports
package v1

import (
	"github.com/robfig/cron"
	apierrors "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/api/errors"
	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime"
	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime/schema"
	validationutils "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/validation"
	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/validation/field"
	ctrl "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime"
	logf "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/log"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/webhook"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/webhook/admission"
)

Next, we’ll setup a logger for the webhooks.

var cronjoblog = logf.Log.WithName("cronjob-resource")

Then, we set up the webhook with the manager.

// SetupWebhookWithManager will setup the manager to manage the webhooks
func (r *CronJob) SetupWebhookWithManager(mgr ctrl.Manager) error {
	return ctrl.NewWebhookManagedBy(mgr).
		For(r).
		Complete()
}

Notice that we use kubebuilder markers to generate webhook manifests. This marker is responsible for generating a mutating webhook manifest.

The meaning of each marker can be found here.

//+kubebuilder:webhook:path=/mutate-batch-tutorial-kubebuilder-io-v1-cronjob,mutating=true,failurePolicy=fail,groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs,verbs=create;update,versions=v1,name=mcronjob.kb.io,sideEffects=None,admissionReviewVersions=v1

We use the webhook.Defaulter interface to set defaults to our CRD. A webhook will automatically be served that calls this defaulting.

The Default method is expected to mutate the receiver, setting the defaults.

var _ webhook.Defaulter = &CronJob{}

// Default implements webhook.Defaulter so a webhook will be registered for the type
func (r *CronJob) Default() {
	cronjoblog.Info("default", "name", r.Name)

	if r.Spec.ConcurrencyPolicy == "" {
		r.Spec.ConcurrencyPolicy = AllowConcurrent
	}
	if r.Spec.Suspend == nil {
		r.Spec.Suspend = new(bool)
	}
	if r.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit == nil {
		r.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit = new(int32)
		*r.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit = 3
	}
	if r.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit == nil {
		r.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit = new(int32)
		*r.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit = 1
	}
}

This marker is responsible for generating a validating webhook manifest.

//+kubebuilder:webhook:verbs=create;update;delete,path=/validate-batch-tutorial-kubebuilder-io-v1-cronjob,mutating=false,failurePolicy=fail,groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs,versions=v1,name=vcronjob.kb.io,sideEffects=None,admissionReviewVersions=v1

We can validate our CRD beyond what’s possible with declarative validation. Generally, declarative validation should be sufficient, but sometimes more advanced use cases call for complex validation.

For instance, we’ll see below that we use this to validate a well-formed cron schedule without making up a long regular expression.

If webhook.Validator interface is implemented, a webhook will automatically be served that calls the validation.

The ValidateCreate, ValidateUpdate and ValidateDelete methods are expected to validate its receiver upon creation, update and deletion respectively. We separate out ValidateCreate from ValidateUpdate to allow behavior like making certain fields immutable, so that they can only be set on creation. ValidateDelete is also separated from ValidateUpdate to allow different validation behavior on deletion. Here, however, we just use the same shared validation for ValidateCreate and ValidateUpdate. And we do nothing in ValidateDelete, since we don’t need to validate anything on deletion.

var _ webhook.Validator = &CronJob{}

// ValidateCreate implements webhook.Validator so a webhook will be registered for the type
func (r *CronJob) ValidateCreate() (admission.Warnings, error) {
	cronjoblog.Info("validate create", "name", r.Name)

	return nil, r.validateCronJob()
}

// ValidateUpdate implements webhook.Validator so a webhook will be registered for the type
func (r *CronJob) ValidateUpdate(old runtime.Object) (admission.Warnings, error) {
	cronjoblog.Info("validate update", "name", r.Name)

	return nil, r.validateCronJob()
}

// ValidateDelete implements webhook.Validator so a webhook will be registered for the type
func (r *CronJob) ValidateDelete() (admission.Warnings, error) {
	cronjoblog.Info("validate delete", "name", r.Name)

	// TODO(user): fill in your validation logic upon object deletion.
	return nil, nil
}

We validate the name and the spec of the CronJob.

func (r *CronJob) validateCronJob() error {
	var allErrs field.ErrorList
	if err := r.validateCronJobName(); err != nil {
		allErrs = append(allErrs, err)
	}
	if err := r.validateCronJobSpec(); err != nil {
		allErrs = append(allErrs, err)
	}
	if len(allErrs) == 0 {
		return nil
	}

	return apierrors.NewInvalid(
		schema.GroupKind{Group: "batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io", Kind: "CronJob"},
		r.Name, allErrs)
}

Some fields are declaratively validated by OpenAPI schema. You can find kubebuilder validation markers (prefixed with // +kubebuilder:validation) in the Designing an API section. You can find all of the kubebuilder supported markers for declaring validation by running controller-gen crd -w, or here.

func (r *CronJob) validateCronJobSpec() *field.Error {
	// The field helpers from the kubernetes API machinery help us return nicely
	// structured validation errors.
	return validateScheduleFormat(
		r.Spec.Schedule,
		field.NewPath("spec").Child("schedule"))
}

We’ll need to validate the cron schedule is well-formatted.

func validateScheduleFormat(schedule string, fldPath *field.Path) *field.Error {
	if _, err := cron.ParseStandard(schedule); err != nil {
		return field.Invalid(fldPath, schedule, err.Error())
	}
	return nil
}
Validate object name

Validating the length of a string field can be done declaratively by the validation schema.

But the ObjectMeta.Name field is defined in a shared package under the apimachinery repo, so we can’t declaratively validate it using the validation schema.

func (r *CronJob) validateCronJobName() *field.Error {
	if len(r.ObjectMeta.Name) > validationutils.DNS1035LabelMaxLength-11 {
		// The job name length is 63 character like all Kubernetes objects
		// (which must fit in a DNS subdomain). The cronjob controller appends
		// a 11-character suffix to the cronjob (`-$TIMESTAMP`) when creating
		// a job. The job name length limit is 63 characters. Therefore cronjob
		// names must have length <= 63-11=52. If we don't validate this here,
		// then job creation will fail later.
		return field.Invalid(field.NewPath("metadata").Child("name"), r.Name, "must be no more than 52 characters")
	}
	return nil
}

Running and deploying the controller

Optional

If opting to make any changes to the API definitions, then before proceeding, generate the manifests like CRs or CRDs with

make manifests

To test out the controller, we can run it locally against the cluster. Before we do so, though, we’ll need to install our CRDs, as per the quick start. This will automatically update the YAML manifests using controller-tools, if needed:

make install

Now that we’ve installed our CRDs, we can run the controller against our cluster. This will use whatever credentials that we connect to the cluster with, so we don’t need to worry about RBAC just yet.

In a separate terminal, run

export ENABLE_WEBHOOKS=false
make run

You should see logs from the controller about starting up, but it won’t do anything just yet.

At this point, we need a CronJob to test with. Let’s write a sample to config/samples/batch_v1_cronjob.yaml, and use that:

apiVersion: batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: project
    app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: kustomize
  name: cronjob-sample
spec:
  schedule: "*/1 * * * *"
  startingDeadlineSeconds: 60
  concurrencyPolicy: Allow # explicitly specify, but Allow is also default.
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: hello
            image: busybox
            args:
            - /bin/sh
            - -c
            - date; echo Hello from the Kubernetes cluster
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
  
kubectl create -f config/samples/batch_v1_cronjob.yaml

At this point, you should see a flurry of activity. If you watch the changes, you should see your cronjob running, and updating status:

kubectl get cronjob.batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io -o yaml
kubectl get job

Now that we know it’s working, we can run it in the cluster. Stop the make run invocation, and run

make docker-build docker-push IMG=<some-registry>/<project-name>:tag
make deploy IMG=<some-registry>/<project-name>:tag

If we list cronjobs again like we did before, we should see the controller functioning again!

Deploying cert-manager

We suggest using cert-manager for provisioning the certificates for the webhook server. Other solutions should also work as long as they put the certificates in the desired location.

You can follow the cert-manager documentation to install it.

cert-manager also has a component called CA Injector, which is responsible for injecting the CA bundle into the MutatingWebhookConfiguration / ValidatingWebhookConfiguration.

To accomplish that, you need to use an annotation with key cert-manager.io/inject-ca-from in the MutatingWebhookConfiguration / ValidatingWebhookConfiguration objects. The value of the annotation should point to an existing certificate request instance in the format of <certificate-namespace>/<certificate-name>.

This is the kustomize patch we used for annotating the MutatingWebhookConfiguration / ValidatingWebhookConfiguration objects.

# This patch add annotation to admission webhook config and
# CERTIFICATE_NAMESPACE and CERTIFICATE_NAME will be substituted by kustomize
apiVersion: admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1
kind: MutatingWebhookConfiguration
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: mutatingwebhookconfiguration
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: mutating-webhook-configuration
    app.kubernetes.io/component: webhook
    app.kubernetes.io/created-by: project
    app.kubernetes.io/part-of: project
    app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: kustomize
  name: mutating-webhook-configuration
  annotations:
    cert-manager.io/inject-ca-from: CERTIFICATE_NAMESPACE/CERTIFICATE_NAME
---
apiVersion: admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1
kind: ValidatingWebhookConfiguration
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: validatingwebhookconfiguration
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: validating-webhook-configuration
    app.kubernetes.io/component: webhook
    app.kubernetes.io/created-by: project
    app.kubernetes.io/part-of: project
    app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: kustomize
  name: validating-webhook-configuration
  annotations:
    cert-manager.io/inject-ca-from: CERTIFICATE_NAMESPACE/CERTIFICATE_NAME

Deploying Admission Webhooks

Kind Cluster

It is recommended to develop your webhook with a kind cluster for faster iteration. Why?

  • You can bring up a multi-node cluster locally within 1 minute.
  • You can tear it down in seconds.
  • You don’t need to push your images to remote registry.

cert-manager

You need to follow this to install the cert-manager bundle.

Build your image

Run the following command to build your image locally.

make docker-build docker-push IMG=<some-registry>/<project-name>:tag

You don’t need to push the image to a remote container registry if you are using a kind cluster. You can directly load your local image to your specified kind cluster:

kind load docker-image <your-image-name>:tag --name <your-kind-cluster-name>

Deploy Webhooks

You need to enable the webhook and cert manager configuration through kustomize. config/default/kustomization.yaml should now look like the following:

# Adds namespace to all resources.
namespace: project-system

# Value of this field is prepended to the
# names of all resources, e.g. a deployment named
# "wordpress" becomes "alices-wordpress".
# Note that it should also match with the prefix (text before '-') of the namespace
# field above.
namePrefix: project-

# Labels to add to all resources and selectors.
#labels:
#- includeSelectors: true
#  pairs:
#    someName: someValue

resources:
- ../crd
- ../rbac
- ../manager
# [WEBHOOK] To enable webhook, uncomment all the sections with [WEBHOOK] prefix including the one in
# crd/kustomization.yaml
- ../webhook
# [CERTMANAGER] To enable cert-manager, uncomment all sections with 'CERTMANAGER'. 'WEBHOOK' components are required.
- ../certmanager
# [PROMETHEUS] To enable prometheus monitor, uncomment all sections with 'PROMETHEUS'.
- ../prometheus

patches:
# Protect the /metrics endpoint by putting it behind auth.
# If you want your controller-manager to expose the /metrics
# endpoint w/o any authn/z, please comment the following line.
- path: manager_auth_proxy_patch.yaml

# [WEBHOOK] To enable webhook, uncomment all the sections with [WEBHOOK] prefix including the one in
# crd/kustomization.yaml
- path: manager_webhook_patch.yaml

# [CERTMANAGER] To enable cert-manager, uncomment all sections with 'CERTMANAGER'.
# Uncomment 'CERTMANAGER' sections in crd/kustomization.yaml to enable the CA injection in the admission webhooks.
# 'CERTMANAGER' needs to be enabled to use ca injection
- path: webhookcainjection_patch.yaml

# [CERTMANAGER] To enable cert-manager, uncomment all sections with 'CERTMANAGER' prefix.
# Uncomment the following replacements to add the cert-manager CA injection annotations
replacements:
  - source: # Add cert-manager annotation to ValidatingWebhookConfiguration, MutatingWebhookConfiguration and CRDs
      kind: Certificate
      group: cert-manager.io
      version: v1
      name: serving-cert # this name should match the one in certificate.yaml
      fieldPath: .metadata.namespace # namespace of the certificate CR
    targets:
      - select:
          kind: ValidatingWebhookConfiguration
        fieldPaths:
          - .metadata.annotations.[cert-manager.io/inject-ca-from]
        options:
          delimiter: '/'
          index: 0
          create: true
      - select:
          kind: MutatingWebhookConfiguration
        fieldPaths:
          - .metadata.annotations.[cert-manager.io/inject-ca-from]
        options:
          delimiter: '/'
          index: 0
          create: true
      - select:
          kind: CustomResourceDefinition
        fieldPaths:
          - .metadata.annotations.[cert-manager.io/inject-ca-from]
        options:
          delimiter: '/'
          index: 0
          create: true
  - source:
      kind: Certificate
      group: cert-manager.io
      version: v1
      name: serving-cert # this name should match the one in certificate.yaml
      fieldPath: .metadata.name
    targets:
      - select:
          kind: ValidatingWebhookConfiguration
        fieldPaths:
          - .metadata.annotations.[cert-manager.io/inject-ca-from]
        options:
          delimiter: '/'
          index: 1
          create: true
      - select:
          kind: MutatingWebhookConfiguration
        fieldPaths:
          - .metadata.annotations.[cert-manager.io/inject-ca-from]
        options:
          delimiter: '/'
          index: 1
          create: true
      - select:
          kind: CustomResourceDefinition
        fieldPaths:
          - .metadata.annotations.[cert-manager.io/inject-ca-from]
        options:
          delimiter: '/'
          index: 1
          create: true
  - source: # Add cert-manager annotation to the webhook Service
      kind: Service
      version: v1
      name: webhook-service
      fieldPath: .metadata.name # namespace of the service
    targets:
      - select:
          kind: Certificate
          group: cert-manager.io
          version: v1
        fieldPaths:
          - .spec.dnsNames.0
          - .spec.dnsNames.1
        options:
          delimiter: '.'
          index: 0
          create: true
  - source:
      kind: Service
      version: v1
      name: webhook-service
      fieldPath: .metadata.namespace # namespace of the service
    targets:
      - select:
          kind: Certificate
          group: cert-manager.io
          version: v1
        fieldPaths:
          - .spec.dnsNames.0
          - .spec.dnsNames.1
        options:
          delimiter: '.'
          index: 1
          create: true

And config/crd/kustomization.yaml should now look like the following:

# This kustomization.yaml is not intended to be run by itself,
# since it depends on service name and namespace that are out of this kustomize package.
# It should be run by config/default
resources:
- bases/batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io_cronjobs.yaml
#+kubebuilder:scaffold:crdkustomizeresource

patches:
# [WEBHOOK] To enable webhook, uncomment all the sections with [WEBHOOK] prefix.
# patches here are for enabling the conversion webhook for each CRD
- path: patches/webhook_in_cronjobs.yaml
#+kubebuilder:scaffold:crdkustomizewebhookpatch

# [CERTMANAGER] To enable cert-manager, uncomment all the sections with [CERTMANAGER] prefix.
# patches here are for enabling the CA injection for each CRD
- path: patches/cainjection_in_cronjobs.yaml
#+kubebuilder:scaffold:crdkustomizecainjectionpatch

# [WEBHOOK] To enable webhook, uncomment the following section
# the following config is for teaching kustomize how to do kustomization for CRDs.

configurations:
- kustomizeconfig.yaml

Now you can deploy it to your cluster by

make deploy IMG=<some-registry>/<project-name>:tag

Wait a while till the webhook pod comes up and the certificates are provisioned. It usually completes within 1 minute.

Now you can create a valid CronJob to test your webhooks. The creation should successfully go through.

kubectl create -f config/samples/batch_v1_cronjob.yaml

You can also try to create an invalid CronJob (e.g. use an ill-formatted schedule field). You should see a creation failure with a validation error.

Writing controller tests

Testing Kubernetes controllers is a big subject, and the boilerplate testing files generated for you by kubebuilder are fairly minimal.

To walk you through integration testing patterns for Kubebuilder-generated controllers, we will revisit the CronJob we built in our first tutorial and write a simple test for it.

The basic approach is that, in your generated suite_test.go file, you will use envtest to create a local Kubernetes API server, instantiate and run your controllers, and then write additional *_test.go files to test it using Ginkgo.

If you want to tinker with how your envtest cluster is configured, see section Configuring envtest for integration tests as well as the envtest docs.

Test Environment Setup

../../cronjob-tutorial/testdata/project/internal/controller/suite_test.go
Apache License

Copyright 2024 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Imports

When we created the CronJob API with kubebuilder create api in a previous chapter, Kubebuilder already did some test work for you. Kubebuilder scaffolded a internal/controller/suite_test.go file that does the bare bones of setting up a test environment.

First, it will contain the necessary imports.

package controller

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"path/filepath"
	"runtime"
	"testing"

	ctrl "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime"

	. "github.com/onsi/ginkgo/v2"
	. "github.com/onsi/gomega"

	"k8s.io/client-go/kubernetes/scheme"
	"k8s.io/client-go/rest"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/client"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/envtest"
	logf "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/log"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/log/zap"

	batchv1 "tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/api/v1"
	//+kubebuilder:scaffold:imports
)

// These tests use Ginkgo (BDD-style Go testing framework). Refer to
// http://onsi.github.io/ginkgo/ to learn more about Ginkgo.

Now, let’s go through the code generated.

var (
	cfg       *rest.Config
	k8sClient client.Client // You'll be using this client in your tests.
	testEnv   *envtest.Environment
	ctx       context.Context
	cancel    context.CancelFunc
)

func TestControllers(t *testing.T) {
	RegisterFailHandler(Fail)

	RunSpecs(t, "Controller Suite")
}

var _ = BeforeSuite(func() {
	logf.SetLogger(zap.New(zap.WriteTo(GinkgoWriter), zap.UseDevMode(true)))

	ctx, cancel = context.WithCancel(context.TODO())

First, the envtest cluster is configured to read CRDs from the CRD directory Kubebuilder scaffolds for you.

	By("bootstrapping test environment")
	testEnv = &envtest.Environment{
		CRDDirectoryPaths:     []string{filepath.Join("..", "..", "config", "crd", "bases")},
		ErrorIfCRDPathMissing: true,

		// The BinaryAssetsDirectory is only required if you want to run the tests directly
		// without call the makefile target test. If not informed it will look for the
		// default path defined in controller-runtime which is /usr/local/kubebuilder/.
		// Note that you must have the required binaries setup under the bin directory to perform
		// the tests directly. When we run make test it will be setup and used automatically.
		BinaryAssetsDirectory: filepath.Join("..", "..", "bin", "k8s",
			fmt.Sprintf("1.29.0-%s-%s", runtime.GOOS, runtime.GOARCH)),
	}

Then, we start the envtest cluster.

	var err error
	// cfg is defined in this file globally.
	cfg, err = testEnv.Start()
	Expect(err).NotTo(HaveOccurred())
	Expect(cfg).NotTo(BeNil())

The autogenerated test code will add the CronJob Kind schema to the default client-go k8s scheme. This ensures that the CronJob API/Kind will be used in our test controller.

	err = batchv1.AddToScheme(scheme.Scheme)
	Expect(err).NotTo(HaveOccurred())

After the schemas, you will see the following marker. This marker is what allows new schemas to be added here automatically when a new API is added to the project.

	//+kubebuilder:scaffold:scheme

A client is created for our test CRUD operations.

	k8sClient, err = client.New(cfg, client.Options{Scheme: scheme.Scheme})
	Expect(err).NotTo(HaveOccurred())
	Expect(k8sClient).NotTo(BeNil())

One thing that this autogenerated file is missing, however, is a way to actually start your controller. The code above will set up a client for interacting with your custom Kind, but will not be able to test your controller behavior. If you want to test your custom controller logic, you’ll need to add some familiar-looking manager logic to your BeforeSuite() function, so you can register your custom controller to run on this test cluster.

You may notice that the code below runs your controller with nearly identical logic to your CronJob project’s main.go! The only difference is that the manager is started in a separate goroutine so it does not block the cleanup of envtest when you’re done running your tests.

Note that we set up both a “live” k8s client and a separate client from the manager. This is because when making assertions in tests, you generally want to assert against the live state of the API server. If you use the client from the manager (k8sManager.GetClient), you’d end up asserting against the contents of the cache instead, which is slower and can introduce flakiness into your tests. We could use the manager’s APIReader to accomplish the same thing, but that would leave us with two clients in our test assertions and setup (one for reading, one for writing), and it’d be easy to make mistakes.

Note that we keep the reconciler running against the manager’s cache client, though – we want our controller to behave as it would in production, and we use features of the cache (like indicies) in our controller which aren’t available when talking directly to the API server.

	k8sManager, err := ctrl.NewManager(cfg, ctrl.Options{
		Scheme: scheme.Scheme,
	})
	Expect(err).ToNot(HaveOccurred())

	err = (&CronJobReconciler{
		Client: k8sManager.GetClient(),
		Scheme: k8sManager.GetScheme(),
	}).SetupWithManager(k8sManager)
	Expect(err).ToNot(HaveOccurred())

	go func() {
		defer GinkgoRecover()
		err = k8sManager.Start(ctx)
		Expect(err).ToNot(HaveOccurred(), "failed to run manager")
	}()

})

Kubebuilder also generates boilerplate functions for cleaning up envtest and actually running your test files in your controllers/ directory. You won’t need to touch these.

var _ = AfterSuite(func() {
	cancel()
	By("tearing down the test environment")
	err := testEnv.Stop()
	Expect(err).NotTo(HaveOccurred())
})

Now that you have your controller running on a test cluster and a client ready to perform operations on your CronJob, we can start writing integration tests!

Testing your Controller’s Behavior

../../cronjob-tutorial/testdata/project/internal/controller/cronjob_controller_test.go
Apache License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Ideally, we should have one <kind>_controller_test.go for each controller scaffolded and called in the suite_test.go. So, let’s write our example test for the CronJob controller (cronjob_controller_test.go.)

Imports

As usual, we start with the necessary imports. We also define some utility variables.

package controller

import (
	"context"
	"reflect"
	"time"

	. "github.com/onsi/ginkgo/v2"
	. "github.com/onsi/gomega"
	batchv1 "k8s.io/api/batch/v1"
	v1 "k8s.io/api/core/v1"
	metav1 "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1"
	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/types"

	cronjobv1 "tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/api/v1"
)

The first step to writing a simple integration test is to actually create an instance of CronJob you can run tests against. Note that to create a CronJob, you’ll need to create a stub CronJob struct that contains your CronJob’s specifications.

Note that when we create a stub CronJob, the CronJob also needs stubs of its required downstream objects. Without the stubbed Job template spec and the Pod template spec below, the Kubernetes API will not be able to create the CronJob.

var _ = Describe("CronJob controller", func() {

	// Define utility constants for object names and testing timeouts/durations and intervals.
	const (
		CronjobName      = "test-cronjob"
		CronjobNamespace = "default"
		JobName          = "test-job"

		timeout  = time.Second * 10
		duration = time.Second * 10
		interval = time.Millisecond * 250
	)

	Context("When updating CronJob Status", func() {
		It("Should increase CronJob Status.Active count when new Jobs are created", func() {
			By("By creating a new CronJob")
			ctx := context.Background()
			cronJob := &cronjobv1.CronJob{
				TypeMeta: metav1.TypeMeta{
					APIVersion: "batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/v1",
					Kind:       "CronJob",
				},
				ObjectMeta: metav1.ObjectMeta{
					Name:      CronjobName,
					Namespace: CronjobNamespace,
				},
				Spec: cronjobv1.CronJobSpec{
					Schedule: "1 * * * *",
					JobTemplate: batchv1.JobTemplateSpec{
						Spec: batchv1.JobSpec{
							// For simplicity, we only fill out the required fields.
							Template: v1.PodTemplateSpec{
								Spec: v1.PodSpec{
									// For simplicity, we only fill out the required fields.
									Containers: []v1.Container{
										{
											Name:  "test-container",
											Image: "test-image",
										},
									},
									RestartPolicy: v1.RestartPolicyOnFailure,
								},
							},
						},
					},
				},
			}
			Expect(k8sClient.Create(ctx, cronJob)).Should(Succeed())

		

After creating this CronJob, let’s check that the CronJob’s Spec fields match what we passed in. Note that, because the k8s apiserver may not have finished creating a CronJob after our Create() call from earlier, we will use Gomega’s Eventually() testing function instead of Expect() to give the apiserver an opportunity to finish creating our CronJob.

Eventually() will repeatedly run the function provided as an argument every interval seconds until (a) the function’s output matches what’s expected in the subsequent Should() call, or (b) the number of attempts * interval period exceed the provided timeout value.

In the examples below, timeout and interval are Go Duration values of our choosing.

			cronjobLookupKey := types.NamespacedName{Name: CronjobName, Namespace: CronjobNamespace}
			createdCronjob := &cronjobv1.CronJob{}

			// We'll need to retry getting this newly created CronJob, given that creation may not immediately happen.
			Eventually(func() bool {
				err := k8sClient.Get(ctx, cronjobLookupKey, createdCronjob)
				return err == nil
			}, timeout, interval).Should(BeTrue())
			// Let's make sure our Schedule string value was properly converted/handled.
			Expect(createdCronjob.Spec.Schedule).Should(Equal("1 * * * *"))
		

Now that we’ve created a CronJob in our test cluster, the next step is to write a test that actually tests our CronJob controller’s behavior. Let’s test the CronJob controller’s logic responsible for updating CronJob.Status.Active with actively running jobs. We’ll verify that when a CronJob has a single active downstream Job, its CronJob.Status.Active field contains a reference to this Job.

First, we should get the test CronJob we created earlier, and verify that it currently does not have any active jobs. We use Gomega’s Consistently() check here to ensure that the active job count remains 0 over a duration of time.

			By("By checking the CronJob has zero active Jobs")
			Consistently(func() (int, error) {
				err := k8sClient.Get(ctx, cronjobLookupKey, createdCronjob)
				if err != nil {
					return -1, err
				}
				return len(createdCronjob.Status.Active), nil
			}, duration, interval).Should(Equal(0))
		

Next, we actually create a stubbed Job that will belong to our CronJob, as well as its downstream template specs. We set the Job’s status’s “Active” count to 2 to simulate the Job running two pods, which means the Job is actively running.

We then take the stubbed Job and set its owner reference to point to our test CronJob. This ensures that the test Job belongs to, and is tracked by, our test CronJob. Once that’s done, we create our new Job instance.

			By("By creating a new Job")
			testJob := &batchv1.Job{
				ObjectMeta: metav1.ObjectMeta{
					Name:      JobName,
					Namespace: CronjobNamespace,
				},
				Spec: batchv1.JobSpec{
					Template: v1.PodTemplateSpec{
						Spec: v1.PodSpec{
							// For simplicity, we only fill out the required fields.
							Containers: []v1.Container{
								{
									Name:  "test-container",
									Image: "test-image",
								},
							},
							RestartPolicy: v1.RestartPolicyOnFailure,
						},
					},
				},
				Status: batchv1.JobStatus{
					Active: 2,
				},
			}

			// Note that your CronJob’s GroupVersionKind is required to set up this owner reference.
			kind := reflect.TypeOf(cronjobv1.CronJob{}).Name()
			gvk := cronjobv1.GroupVersion.WithKind(kind)

			controllerRef := metav1.NewControllerRef(createdCronjob, gvk)
			testJob.SetOwnerReferences([]metav1.OwnerReference{*controllerRef})
			Expect(k8sClient.Create(ctx, testJob)).Should(Succeed())
		

Adding this Job to our test CronJob should trigger our controller’s reconciler logic. After that, we can write a test that evaluates whether our controller eventually updates our CronJob’s Status field as expected!

			By("By checking that the CronJob has one active Job")
			Eventually(func() ([]string, error) {
				err := k8sClient.Get(ctx, cronjobLookupKey, createdCronjob)
				if err != nil {
					return nil, err
				}

				names := []string{}
				for _, job := range createdCronjob.Status.Active {
					names = append(names, job.Name)
				}
				return names, nil
			}, timeout, interval).Should(ConsistOf(JobName), "should list our active job %s in the active jobs list in status", JobName)
		})
	})

})

After writing all this code, you can run go test ./... in your controllers/ directory again to run your new test!

This Status update example above demonstrates a general testing strategy for a custom Kind with downstream objects. By this point, you hopefully have learned the following methods for testing your controller behavior:

  • Setting up your controller to run on an envtest cluster
  • Writing stubs for creating test objects
  • Isolating changes to an object to test specific controller behavior

Advanced Examples

There are more involved examples of using envtest to rigorously test controller behavior. Examples include:

  • Azure Databricks Operator: see their fully fleshed-out suite_test.go as well as any *_test.go file in that directory like this one.

Epilogue

By this point, we’ve got a pretty full-featured implementation of the CronJob controller, made use of most of the features of Kubebuilder, and written tests for the controller using envtest.

If you want more, head over to the Multi-Version Tutorial to learn how to add new API versions to a project.

Additionally, you can try the following steps on your own – we’ll have a tutorial section on them Soon™:

Tutorial: Multi-Version API

Most projects start out with an alpha API that changes release to release. However, eventually, most projects will need to move to a more stable API. Once your API is stable though, you can’t make breaking changes to it. That’s where API versions come into play.

Let’s make some changes to the CronJob API spec and make sure all the different versions are supported by our CronJob project.

If you haven’t already, make sure you’ve gone through the base CronJob Tutorial.

Next, let’s figure out what changes we want to make…

Changing things up

A fairly common change in a Kubernetes API is to take some data that used to be unstructured or stored in some special string format, and change it to structured data. Our schedule field fits the bill quite nicely for this – right now, in v1, our schedules look like

schedule: "*/1 * * * *"

That’s a pretty textbook example of a special string format (it’s also pretty unreadable unless you’re a Unix sysadmin).

Let’s make it a bit more structured. According to our CronJob code, we support “standard” Cron format.

In Kubernetes, all versions must be safely round-tripable through each other. This means that if we convert from version 1 to version 2, and then back to version 1, we must not lose information. Thus, any change we make to our API must be compatible with whatever we supported in v1, and also need to make sure anything we add in v2 is supported in v1. In some cases, this means we need to add new fields to v1, but in our case, we won’t have to, since we’re not adding new functionality.

Keeping all that in mind, let’s convert our example above to be slightly more structured:

schedule:
  minute: */1

Now, at least, we’ve got labels for each of our fields, but we can still easily support all the different syntax for each field.

We’ll need a new API version for this change. Let’s call it v2:

kubebuilder create api --group batch --version v2 --kind CronJob

Press y for “Create Resource” and n for “Create Controller”.

Now, let’s copy over our existing types, and make the change:

project/api/v2/cronjob_types.go
Apache License

Copyright 2023 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Since we’re in a v2 package, controller-gen will assume this is for the v2 version automatically. We could override that with the +versionName marker.

package v2
Imports
import (
	batchv1 "k8s.io/api/batch/v1"
	corev1 "k8s.io/api/core/v1"
	metav1 "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1"
)

// EDIT THIS FILE!  THIS IS SCAFFOLDING FOR YOU TO OWN!
// NOTE: json tags are required.  Any new fields you add must have json tags for the fields to be serialized.

We’ll leave our spec largely unchanged, except to change the schedule field to a new type.

// CronJobSpec defines the desired state of CronJob
type CronJobSpec struct {
	// The schedule in Cron format, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron.
	Schedule CronSchedule `json:"schedule"`
The rest of Spec
	// +kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=0

	// Optional deadline in seconds for starting the job if it misses scheduled
	// time for any reason.  Missed jobs executions will be counted as failed ones.
	// +optional
	StartingDeadlineSeconds *int64 `json:"startingDeadlineSeconds,omitempty"`

	// Specifies how to treat concurrent executions of a Job.
	// Valid values are:
	// - "Allow" (default): allows CronJobs to run concurrently;
	// - "Forbid": forbids concurrent runs, skipping next run if previous run hasn't finished yet;
	// - "Replace": cancels currently running job and replaces it with a new one
	// +optional
	ConcurrencyPolicy ConcurrencyPolicy `json:"concurrencyPolicy,omitempty"`

	// This flag tells the controller to suspend subsequent executions, it does
	// not apply to already started executions.  Defaults to false.
	// +optional
	Suspend *bool `json:"suspend,omitempty"`

	// Specifies the job that will be created when executing a CronJob.
	JobTemplate batchv1.JobTemplateSpec `json:"jobTemplate"`

	// +kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=0

	// The number of successful finished jobs to retain.
	// This is a pointer to distinguish between explicit zero and not specified.
	// +optional
	SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit *int32 `json:"successfulJobsHistoryLimit,omitempty"`

	// +kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=0

	// The number of failed finished jobs to retain.
	// This is a pointer to distinguish between explicit zero and not specified.
	// +optional
	FailedJobsHistoryLimit *int32 `json:"failedJobsHistoryLimit,omitempty"`
}

Next, we’ll need to define a type to hold our schedule. Based on our proposed YAML above, it’ll have a field for each corresponding Cron “field”.

// describes a Cron schedule.
type CronSchedule struct {
	// specifies the minute during which the job executes.
	// +optional
	Minute *CronField `json:"minute,omitempty"`
	// specifies the hour during which the job executes.
	// +optional
	Hour *CronField `json:"hour,omitempty"`
	// specifies the day of the month during which the job executes.
	// +optional
	DayOfMonth *CronField `json:"dayOfMonth,omitempty"`
	// specifies the month during which the job executes.
	// +optional
	Month *CronField `json:"month,omitempty"`
	// specifies the day of the week during which the job executes.
	// +optional
	DayOfWeek *CronField `json:"dayOfWeek,omitempty"`
}

Finally, we’ll define a wrapper type to represent a field. We could attach additional validation to this field, but for now we’ll just use it for documentation purposes.

// represents a Cron field specifier.
type CronField string
Other Types

All the other types will stay the same as before.

// ConcurrencyPolicy describes how the job will be handled.
// Only one of the following concurrent policies may be specified.
// If none of the following policies is specified, the default one
// is AllowConcurrent.
// +kubebuilder:validation:Enum=Allow;Forbid;Replace
type ConcurrencyPolicy string

const (
	// AllowConcurrent allows CronJobs to run concurrently.
	AllowConcurrent ConcurrencyPolicy = "Allow"

	// ForbidConcurrent forbids concurrent runs, skipping next run if previous
	// hasn't finished yet.
	ForbidConcurrent ConcurrencyPolicy = "Forbid"

	// ReplaceConcurrent cancels currently running job and replaces it with a new one.
	ReplaceConcurrent ConcurrencyPolicy = "Replace"
)

// CronJobStatus defines the observed state of CronJob
type CronJobStatus struct {
	// INSERT ADDITIONAL STATUS FIELD - define observed state of cluster
	// Important: Run "make" to regenerate code after modifying this file

	// A list of pointers to currently running jobs.
	// +optional
	Active []corev1.ObjectReference `json:"active,omitempty"`

	// Information when was the last time the job was successfully scheduled.
	// +optional
	LastScheduleTime *metav1.Time `json:"lastScheduleTime,omitempty"`
}

//+kubebuilder:object:root=true
//+kubebuilder:subresource:status

// CronJob is the Schema for the cronjobs API
type CronJob struct {
	metav1.TypeMeta   `json:",inline"`
	metav1.ObjectMeta `json:"metadata,omitempty"`

	Spec   CronJobSpec   `json:"spec,omitempty"`
	Status CronJobStatus `json:"status,omitempty"`
}

//+kubebuilder:object:root=true

// CronJobList contains a list of CronJob
type CronJobList struct {
	metav1.TypeMeta `json:",inline"`
	metav1.ListMeta `json:"metadata,omitempty"`
	Items           []CronJob `json:"items"`
}

func init() {
	SchemeBuilder.Register(&CronJob{}, &CronJobList{})
}

Storage Versions

project/api/v1/cronjob_types.go
Apache License

Copyright 2023 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

package v1
Imports
import (
	batchv1 "k8s.io/api/batch/v1"
	corev1 "k8s.io/api/core/v1"
	metav1 "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1"
)

// EDIT THIS FILE!  THIS IS SCAFFOLDING FOR YOU TO OWN!
// NOTE: json tags are required.  Any new fields you add must have json tags for the fields to be serialized.
old stuff
// CronJobSpec defines the desired state of CronJob
type CronJobSpec struct {
	// +kubebuilder:validation:MinLength=0

	// The schedule in Cron format, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron.
	Schedule string `json:"schedule"`

	// +kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=0

	// Optional deadline in seconds for starting the job if it misses scheduled
	// time for any reason.  Missed jobs executions will be counted as failed ones.
	// +optional
	StartingDeadlineSeconds *int64 `json:"startingDeadlineSeconds,omitempty"`

	// Specifies how to treat concurrent executions of a Job.
	// Valid values are:
	// - "Allow" (default): allows CronJobs to run concurrently;
	// - "Forbid": forbids concurrent runs, skipping next run if previous run hasn't finished yet;
	// - "Replace": cancels currently running job and replaces it with a new one
	// +optional
	ConcurrencyPolicy ConcurrencyPolicy `json:"concurrencyPolicy,omitempty"`

	// This flag tells the controller to suspend subsequent executions, it does
	// not apply to already started executions.  Defaults to false.
	// +optional
	Suspend *bool `json:"suspend,omitempty"`

	// Specifies the job that will be created when executing a CronJob.
	JobTemplate batchv1.JobTemplateSpec `json:"jobTemplate"`

	// +kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=0

	// The number of successful finished jobs to retain.
	// This is a pointer to distinguish between explicit zero and not specified.
	// +optional
	SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit *int32 `json:"successfulJobsHistoryLimit,omitempty"`

	// +kubebuilder:validation:Minimum=0

	// The number of failed finished jobs to retain.
	// This is a pointer to distinguish between explicit zero and not specified.
	// +optional
	FailedJobsHistoryLimit *int32 `json:"failedJobsHistoryLimit,omitempty"`
}

// ConcurrencyPolicy describes how the job will be handled.
// Only one of the following concurrent policies may be specified.
// If none of the following policies is specified, the default one
// is AllowConcurrent.
// +kubebuilder:validation:Enum=Allow;Forbid;Replace
type ConcurrencyPolicy string

const (
	// AllowConcurrent allows CronJobs to run concurrently.
	AllowConcurrent ConcurrencyPolicy = "Allow"

	// ForbidConcurrent forbids concurrent runs, skipping next run if previous
	// hasn't finished yet.
	ForbidConcurrent ConcurrencyPolicy = "Forbid"

	// ReplaceConcurrent cancels currently running job and replaces it with a new one.
	ReplaceConcurrent ConcurrencyPolicy = "Replace"
)

// CronJobStatus defines the observed state of CronJob
type CronJobStatus struct {
	// INSERT ADDITIONAL STATUS FIELD - define observed state of cluster
	// Important: Run "make" to regenerate code after modifying this file

	// A list of pointers to currently running jobs.
	// +optional
	Active []corev1.ObjectReference `json:"active,omitempty"`

	// Information when was the last time the job was successfully scheduled.
	// +optional
	LastScheduleTime *metav1.Time `json:"lastScheduleTime,omitempty"`
}

Since we’ll have more than one version, we’ll need to mark a storage version. This is the version that the Kubernetes API server uses to store our data. We’ll chose the v1 version for our project.

We’ll use the +kubebuilder:storageversion to do this.

Note that multiple versions may exist in storage if they were written before the storage version changes – changing the storage version only affects how objects are created/updated after the change.

//+kubebuilder:object:root=true
//+kubebuilder:subresource:status
//+kubebuilder:storageversion

// CronJob is the Schema for the cronjobs API
type CronJob struct {
	metav1.TypeMeta   `json:",inline"`
	metav1.ObjectMeta `json:"metadata,omitempty"`

	Spec   CronJobSpec   `json:"spec,omitempty"`
	Status CronJobStatus `json:"status,omitempty"`
}
old stuff
//+kubebuilder:object:root=true

// CronJobList contains a list of CronJob
type CronJobList struct {
	metav1.TypeMeta `json:",inline"`
	metav1.ListMeta `json:"metadata,omitempty"`
	Items           []CronJob `json:"items"`
}

func init() {
	SchemeBuilder.Register(&CronJob{}, &CronJobList{})
}

Now that we’ve got our types in place, we’ll need to set up conversion…

Hubs, spokes, and other wheel metaphors

Since we now have two different versions, and users can request either version, we’ll have to define a way to convert between our version. For CRDs, this is done using a webhook, similar to the defaulting and validating webhooks we defined in the base tutorial. Like before, controller-runtime will help us wire together the nitty-gritty bits, we just have to implement the actual conversion.

Before we do that, though, we’ll need to understand how controller-runtime thinks about versions. Namely:

Complete graphs are insufficiently nautical

A simple approach to defining conversion might be to define conversion functions to convert between each of our versions. Then, whenever we need to convert, we’d look up the appropriate function, and call it to run the conversion.

This works fine when we just have two versions, but what if we had 4 types? 8 types? That’d be a lot of conversion functions.

Instead, controller-runtime models conversion in terms of a “hub and spoke” model – we mark one version as the “hub”, and all other versions just define conversion to and from the hub:

becomes

Then, if we have to convert between two non-hub versions, we first convert to the hub version, and then to our desired version:

This cuts down on the number of conversion functions that we have to define, and is modeled off of what Kubernetes does internally.

What does that have to do with Webhooks?

When API clients, like kubectl or your controller, request a particular version of your resource, the Kubernetes API server needs to return a result that’s of that version. However, that version might not match the version stored by the API server.

In that case, the API server needs to know how to convert between the desired version and the stored version. Since the conversions aren’t built in for CRDs, the Kubernetes API server calls out to a webhook to do the conversion instead. For Kubebuilder, this webhook is implemented by controller-runtime, and performs the hub-and-spoke conversions that we discussed above.

Now that we have the model for conversion down pat, we can actually implement our conversions.

Implementing conversion

With our model for conversion in place, it’s time to actually implement the conversion functions. We’ll put them in a file called cronjob_conversion.go next to our cronjob_types.go file, to avoid cluttering up our main types file with extra functions.

Hub…

First, we’ll implement the hub. We’ll choose the v1 version as the hub:

project/api/v1/cronjob_conversion.go
Apache License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

package v1

Implementing the hub method is pretty easy – we just have to add an empty method called Hub() to serve as a marker. We could also just put this inline in our cronjob_types.go file.

// Hub marks this type as a conversion hub.
func (*CronJob) Hub() {}

… and Spokes

Then, we’ll implement our spoke, the v2 version:

project/api/v2/cronjob_conversion.go
Apache License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

package v2
Imports

For imports, we’ll need the controller-runtime conversion package, plus the API version for our hub type (v1), and finally some of the standard packages.

import (
	"fmt"
	"strings"

	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/conversion"

	"tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/api/v1"
)

Our “spoke” versions need to implement the Convertible interface. Namely, they’ll need ConvertTo and ConvertFrom methods to convert to/from the hub version.

ConvertTo is expected to modify its argument to contain the converted object. Most of the conversion is straightforward copying, except for converting our changed field.

// ConvertTo converts this CronJob to the Hub version (v1).
func (src *CronJob) ConvertTo(dstRaw conversion.Hub) error {
	dst := dstRaw.(*v1.CronJob)

	sched := src.Spec.Schedule
	scheduleParts := []string{"*", "*", "*", "*", "*"}
	if sched.Minute != nil {
		scheduleParts[0] = string(*sched.Minute)
	}
	if sched.Hour != nil {
		scheduleParts[1] = string(*sched.Hour)
	}
	if sched.DayOfMonth != nil {
		scheduleParts[2] = string(*sched.DayOfMonth)
	}
	if sched.Month != nil {
		scheduleParts[3] = string(*sched.Month)
	}
	if sched.DayOfWeek != nil {
		scheduleParts[4] = string(*sched.DayOfWeek)
	}
	dst.Spec.Schedule = strings.Join(scheduleParts, " ")
rote conversion

The rest of the conversion is pretty rote.

	// ObjectMeta
	dst.ObjectMeta = src.ObjectMeta

	// Spec
	dst.Spec.StartingDeadlineSeconds = src.Spec.StartingDeadlineSeconds
	dst.Spec.ConcurrencyPolicy = v1.ConcurrencyPolicy(src.Spec.ConcurrencyPolicy)
	dst.Spec.Suspend = src.Spec.Suspend
	dst.Spec.JobTemplate = src.Spec.JobTemplate
	dst.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit = src.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit
	dst.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit = src.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit

	// Status
	dst.Status.Active = src.Status.Active
	dst.Status.LastScheduleTime = src.Status.LastScheduleTime
	return nil
}

ConvertFrom is expected to modify its receiver to contain the converted object. Most of the conversion is straightforward copying, except for converting our changed field.

// ConvertFrom converts from the Hub version (v1) to this version.
func (dst *CronJob) ConvertFrom(srcRaw conversion.Hub) error {
	src := srcRaw.(*v1.CronJob)

	schedParts := strings.Split(src.Spec.Schedule, " ")
	if len(schedParts) != 5 {
		return fmt.Errorf("invalid schedule: not a standard 5-field schedule")
	}
	partIfNeeded := func(raw string) *CronField {
		if raw == "*" {
			return nil
		}
		part := CronField(raw)
		return &part
	}
	dst.Spec.Schedule.Minute = partIfNeeded(schedParts[0])
	dst.Spec.Schedule.Hour = partIfNeeded(schedParts[1])
	dst.Spec.Schedule.DayOfMonth = partIfNeeded(schedParts[2])
	dst.Spec.Schedule.Month = partIfNeeded(schedParts[3])
	dst.Spec.Schedule.DayOfWeek = partIfNeeded(schedParts[4])
rote conversion

The rest of the conversion is pretty rote.

	// ObjectMeta
	dst.ObjectMeta = src.ObjectMeta

	// Spec
	dst.Spec.StartingDeadlineSeconds = src.Spec.StartingDeadlineSeconds
	dst.Spec.ConcurrencyPolicy = ConcurrencyPolicy(src.Spec.ConcurrencyPolicy)
	dst.Spec.Suspend = src.Spec.Suspend
	dst.Spec.JobTemplate = src.Spec.JobTemplate
	dst.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit = src.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit
	dst.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit = src.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit

	// Status
	dst.Status.Active = src.Status.Active
	dst.Status.LastScheduleTime = src.Status.LastScheduleTime
	return nil
}

Now that we’ve got our conversions in place, all that we need to do is wire up our main to serve the webhook!

Setting up the webhooks

Our conversion is in place, so all that’s left is to tell controller-runtime about our conversion.

Normally, we’d run

kubebuilder create webhook --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob --conversion

to scaffold out the webhook setup. However, we’ve already got webhook setup, from when we built our defaulting and validating webhooks!

Webhook setup…

project/api/v1/cronjob_webhook.go
Apache License

Copyright 2023 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Go imports
package v1

import (
	"github.com/robfig/cron"
	apierrors "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/api/errors"
	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime"
	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime/schema"
	validationutils "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/validation"
	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/validation/field"
	ctrl "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime"
	logf "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/log"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/webhook"
)
var cronjoblog = logf.Log.WithName("cronjob-resource")

This setup doubles as setup for our conversion webhooks: as long as our types implement the Hub and Convertible interfaces, a conversion webhook will be registered.

func (r *CronJob) SetupWebhookWithManager(mgr ctrl.Manager) error {
	return ctrl.NewWebhookManagedBy(mgr).
		For(r).
		Complete()
}
Existing Defaulting and Validation
// +kubebuilder:webhook:path=/mutate-batch-tutorial-kubebuilder-io-v1-cronjob,mutating=true,failurePolicy=fail,groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs,verbs=create;update,versions=v1,name=mcronjob.kb.io,sideEffects=None,admissionReviewVersions=v1

var _ webhook.Defaulter = &CronJob{}

// Default implements webhook.Defaulter so a webhook will be registered for the type
func (r *CronJob) Default() {
	cronjoblog.Info("default", "name", r.Name)

	if r.Spec.ConcurrencyPolicy == "" {
		r.Spec.ConcurrencyPolicy = AllowConcurrent
	}
	if r.Spec.Suspend == nil {
		r.Spec.Suspend = new(bool)
	}
	if r.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit == nil {
		r.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit = new(int32)
		*r.Spec.SuccessfulJobsHistoryLimit = 3
	}
	if r.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit == nil {
		r.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit = new(int32)
		*r.Spec.FailedJobsHistoryLimit = 1
	}
}

// +kubebuilder:webhook:verbs=create;update;delete,path=/validate-batch-tutorial-kubebuilder-io-v1-cronjob,mutating=false,failurePolicy=fail,groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs,versions=v1,name=vcronjob.kb.io,sideEffects=None,admissionReviewVersions=v1

var _ webhook.Validator = &CronJob{}

// ValidateCreate implements webhook.Validator so a webhook will be registered for the type
func (r *CronJob) ValidateCreate() error {
	cronjoblog.Info("validate create", "name", r.Name)

	return r.validateCronJob()
}

// ValidateUpdate implements webhook.Validator so a webhook will be registered for the type
func (r *CronJob) ValidateUpdate(old runtime.Object) error {
	cronjoblog.Info("validate update", "name", r.Name)

	return r.validateCronJob()
}

// ValidateDelete implements webhook.Validator so a webhook will be registered for the type
func (r *CronJob) ValidateDelete() error {
	cronjoblog.Info("validate delete", "name", r.Name)

	// TODO(user): fill in your validation logic upon object deletion.
	return nil
}

func (r *CronJob) validateCronJob() error {
	var allErrs field.ErrorList
	if err := r.validateCronJobName(); err != nil {
		allErrs = append(allErrs, err)
	}
	if err := r.validateCronJobSpec(); err != nil {
		allErrs = append(allErrs, err)
	}
	if len(allErrs) == 0 {
		return nil
	}

	return apierrors.NewInvalid(
		schema.GroupKind{Group: "batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io", Kind: "CronJob"},
		r.Name, allErrs)
}

func (r *CronJob) validateCronJobSpec() *field.Error {
	// The field helpers from the kubernetes API machinery help us return nicely
	// structured validation errors.
	return validateScheduleFormat(
		r.Spec.Schedule,
		field.NewPath("spec").Child("schedule"))
}

func validateScheduleFormat(schedule string, fldPath *field.Path) *field.Error {
	if _, err := cron.ParseStandard(schedule); err != nil {
		return field.Invalid(fldPath, schedule, err.Error())
	}
	return nil
}

func (r *CronJob) validateCronJobName() *field.Error {
	if len(r.ObjectMeta.Name) > validationutils.DNS1035LabelMaxLength-11 {
		// The job name length is 63 character like all Kubernetes objects
		// (which must fit in a DNS subdomain). The cronjob controller appends
		// a 11-character suffix to the cronjob (`-$TIMESTAMP`) when creating
		// a job. The job name length limit is 63 characters. Therefore cronjob
		// names must have length <= 63-11=52. If we don't validate this here,
		// then job creation will fail later.
		return field.Invalid(field.NewPath("metadata").Child("name"), r.Name, "must be no more than 52 characters")
	}
	return nil
}

…and main.go

Similarly, our existing main file is sufficient:

project/cmd/main.go
Apache License

Copyright 2023 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Imports
package main

import (
	"flag"
	"os"

	// Import all Kubernetes client auth plugins (e.g. Azure, GCP, OIDC, etc.)
	// to ensure that exec-entrypoint and run can make use of them.
	_ "k8s.io/client-go/plugin/pkg/client/auth"

	kbatchv1 "k8s.io/api/batch/v1"
	"k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime"
	utilruntime "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/runtime"
	clientgoscheme "k8s.io/client-go/kubernetes/scheme"
	ctrl "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/healthz"
	"sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/log/zap"

	batchv1 "tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/api/v1"
	batchv2 "tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/api/v2"
	"tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/internal/controller"
	//+kubebuilder:scaffold:imports
)
existing setup
var (
	scheme   = runtime.NewScheme()
	setupLog = ctrl.Log.WithName("setup")
)

func init() {
	utilruntime.Must(clientgoscheme.AddToScheme(scheme))

	utilruntime.Must(kbatchv1.AddToScheme(scheme)) // we've added this ourselves
	utilruntime.Must(batchv1.AddToScheme(scheme))
	utilruntime.Must(batchv2.AddToScheme(scheme))
	//+kubebuilder:scaffold:scheme
}
func main() {
existing setup
	var metricsAddr string
	var enableLeaderElection bool
	var probeAddr string
	flag.StringVar(&metricsAddr, "metrics-bind-address", ":8080", "The address the metric endpoint binds to.")
	flag.StringVar(&probeAddr, "health-probe-bind-address", ":8081", "The address the probe endpoint binds to.")
	flag.BoolVar(&enableLeaderElection, "leader-elect", false,
		"Enable leader election for controller manager. "+
			"Enabling this will ensure there is only one active controller manager.")
	opts := zap.Options{
		Development: true,
	}
	opts.BindFlags(flag.CommandLine)
	flag.Parse()

	ctrl.SetLogger(zap.New(zap.UseFlagOptions(&opts)))

	mgr, err := ctrl.NewManager(ctrl.GetConfigOrDie(), ctrl.Options{
		Scheme:                 scheme,
		MetricsBindAddress:     metricsAddr,
		Port:                   9443,
		HealthProbeBindAddress: probeAddr,
		LeaderElection:         enableLeaderElection,
		LeaderElectionID:       "80807133.tutorial.kubebuilder.io",
		// LeaderElectionReleaseOnCancel defines if the leader should step down voluntarily
		// when the Manager ends. This requires the binary to immediately end when the
		// Manager is stopped, otherwise, this setting is unsafe. Setting this significantly
		// speeds up voluntary leader transitions as the new leader don't have to wait
		// LeaseDuration time first.
		//
		// In the default scaffold provided, the program ends immediately after
		// the manager stops, so would be fine to enable this option. However,
		// if you are doing or is intended to do any operation such as perform cleanups
		// after the manager stops then its usage might be unsafe.
		// LeaderElectionReleaseOnCancel: true,
	})
	if err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to start manager")
		os.Exit(1)
	}

	if err = (&controller.CronJobReconciler{
		Client: mgr.GetClient(),
		Scheme: mgr.GetScheme(),
	}).SetupWithManager(mgr); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to create controller", "controller", "CronJob")
		os.Exit(1)
	}

Our existing call to SetupWebhookWithManager registers our conversion webhooks with the manager, too.

	if os.Getenv("ENABLE_WEBHOOKS") != "false" {
		if err = (&batchv1.CronJob{}).SetupWebhookWithManager(mgr); err != nil {
			setupLog.Error(err, "unable to create webhook", "webhook", "CronJob")
			os.Exit(1)
		}
		if err = (&batchv2.CronJob{}).SetupWebhookWithManager(mgr); err != nil {
			setupLog.Error(err, "unable to create webhook", "webhook", "CronJob")
			os.Exit(1)
		}
	}
	//+kubebuilder:scaffold:builder
existing setup
	if err := mgr.AddHealthzCheck("healthz", healthz.Ping); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to set up health check")
		os.Exit(1)
	}
	if err := mgr.AddReadyzCheck("readyz", healthz.Ping); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "unable to set up ready check")
		os.Exit(1)
	}

	setupLog.Info("starting manager")
	if err := mgr.Start(ctrl.SetupSignalHandler()); err != nil {
		setupLog.Error(err, "problem running manager")
		os.Exit(1)
	}
}

Everything’s set up and ready to go! All that’s left now is to test out our webhooks.

Deployment and Testing

Before we can test out our conversion, we’ll need to enable them in our CRD:

Kubebuilder generates Kubernetes manifests under the config directory with webhook bits disabled. To enable them, we need to:

  • Enable patches/webhook_in_<kind>.yaml and patches/cainjection_in_<kind>.yaml in config/crd/kustomization.yaml file.

  • Enable ../certmanager and ../webhook directories under the bases section in config/default/kustomization.yaml file.

  • Enable manager_webhook_patch.yaml and webhookcainjection_patch.yaml under the patches section in config/default/kustomization.yaml file.

  • Enable all the vars under the CERTMANAGER section in config/default/kustomization.yaml file.

Additionally, if present in our Makefile, we’ll need to set the CRD_OPTIONS variable to just "crd", removing the trivialVersions option (this ensures that we actually generate validation for each version, instead of telling Kubernetes that they’re the same):

CRD_OPTIONS ?= "crd"

Now we have all our code changes and manifests in place, so let’s deploy it to the cluster and test it out.

You’ll need cert-manager installed (version 0.9.0+) unless you’ve got some other certificate management solution. The Kubebuilder team has tested the instructions in this tutorial with 0.9.0-alpha.0 release.

Once all our ducks are in a row with certificates, we can run make install deploy (as normal) to deploy all the bits (CRD, controller-manager deployment) onto the cluster.

Testing

Once all of the bits are up and running on the cluster with conversion enabled, we can test out our conversion by requesting different versions.

We’ll make a v2 version based on our v1 version (put it under config/samples)

apiVersion: batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/v2
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: cronjob
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: cronjob-sample
    app.kubernetes.io/part-of: project
    app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: kustomize
    app.kubernetes.io/created-by: project
  name: cronjob-sample
spec:
  schedule:
    minute: "*/1"
  startingDeadlineSeconds: 60
  concurrencyPolicy: Allow # explicitly specify, but Allow is also default.
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: hello
            image: busybox
            args:
            - /bin/sh
            - -c
            - date; echo Hello from the Kubernetes cluster
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

Then, we can create it on the cluster:

kubectl apply -f config/samples/batch_v2_cronjob.yaml

If we’ve done everything correctly, it should create successfully, and we should be able to fetch it using both the v2 resource

kubectl get cronjobs.v2.batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io -o yaml
apiVersion: batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/v2
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: cronjob
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: cronjob-sample
    app.kubernetes.io/part-of: project
    app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: kustomize
    app.kubernetes.io/created-by: project
  name: cronjob-sample
spec:
  schedule:
    minute: "*/1"
  startingDeadlineSeconds: 60
  concurrencyPolicy: Allow # explicitly specify, but Allow is also default.
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: hello
            image: busybox
            args:
            - /bin/sh
            - -c
            - date; echo Hello from the Kubernetes cluster
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

and the v1 resource

kubectl get cronjobs.v1.batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io -o yaml
apiVersion: batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: cronjob
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: cronjob-sample
    app.kubernetes.io/part-of: project
    app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: kustomize
    app.kubernetes.io/created-by: project
  name: cronjob-sample
spec:
  schedule: "*/1 * * * *"
  startingDeadlineSeconds: 60
  concurrencyPolicy: Allow # explicitly specify, but Allow is also default.
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: hello
            image: busybox
            args:
            - /bin/sh
            - -c
            - date; echo Hello from the Kubernetes cluster
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

Both should be filled out, and look equivalent to our v2 and v1 samples, respectively. Notice that each has a different API version.

Finally, if we wait a bit, we should notice that our CronJob continues to reconcile, even though our controller is written against our v1 API version.

Troubleshooting

steps for troubleshooting

Tutorial: ComponentConfig

Nearly every project that is built for Kubernetes will eventually need to support passing in additional configurations into the controller. These could be to enable better logging, turn on/off specific feature gates, set the sync period, or a myriad of other controls. Previously this was commonly done using cli flags that your main.go would parse to make them accessible within your program. While this works it’s not a future forward design and the Kubernetes community has been migrating the core components away from this and toward using versioned config files, referred to as “component configs”.

The rest of this tutorial will show you how to configure your kubebuilder project with the component config type then moves on to implementing a custom type so that you can extend this capability.

Resources

Changing things up

This tutorial will show you how to create a custom configuration file for your project by modifying a project generated with the --component-config flag passed to the init command. The full tutorial’s source can be found here. Make sure you’ve gone through the installation steps before continuing.

New project:

# we'll use a domain of tutorial.kubebuilder.io,
# so all API groups will be <group>.tutorial.kubebuilder.io.
kubebuilder init --domain tutorial.kubebuilder.io --component-config

Setting up an existing project

If you’ve previously generated a project we can add support for parsing the config file by making the following changes to main.go.

First, add a new flag to specify the path that the component config file should be loaded from.

var configFile string
flag.StringVar(&configFile, "config", "",
    "The controller will load its initial configuration from this file. "+
        "Omit this flag to use the default configuration values. "+
            "Command-line flags override configuration from this file.")

Now, we can setup the Options struct and check if the configFile is set, this allows backwards compatibility, if it’s set we’ll then use the AndFrom function on Options to parse and populate the Options from the config.

var err error
options := ctrl.Options{Scheme: scheme}
if configFile != "" {
    options, err = options.AndFrom(ctrl.ConfigFile().AtPath(configFile))
    if err != nil {
        setupLog.Error(err, "unable to load the config file")
        os.Exit(1)
    }
}

Lastly, we’ll change the NewManager call to use the options variable we defined above.

mgr, err := ctrl.NewManager(ctrl.GetConfigOrDie(), options)

With that out of the way, we can get on to defining our new config!

Create the file /config/manager/controller_manager_config.yaml with the following content:

apiVersion: controller-runtime.sigs.k8s.io/v1alpha1
kind: ControllerManagerConfig
health:
  healthProbeBindAddress: :8081
metrics:
  bindAddress: 127.0.0.1:8080
webhook:
  port: 9443
leaderElection:
  leaderElect: true
  resourceName: ecaf1259.tutorial.kubebuilder.io
# leaderElectionReleaseOnCancel defines if the leader should step down volume
# when the Manager ends. This requires the binary to immediately end when the
# Manager is stopped, otherwise, this setting is unsafe. Setting this significantly
# speeds up voluntary leader transitions as the new leader don't have to wait
# LeaseDuration time first.
# In the default scaffold provided, the program ends immediately after
# the manager stops, so would be fine to enable this option. However,
# if you are doing or is intended to do any operation such as perform cleanups
# after the manager stops then its usage might be unsafe.
# leaderElectionReleaseOnCancel: true

Update the file /config/manager/kustomization.yaml by adding at the bottom the following content:

generatorOptions:
  disableNameSuffixHash: true

configMapGenerator:
- name: manager-config
  files:
  - controller_manager_config.yaml

Update the file default/kustomization.yaml by adding under the patchesStrategicMerge: key the following patch:

patchesStrategicMerge:
# Mount the controller config file for loading manager configurations
# through a ComponentConfig type
- manager_config_patch.yaml

Update the file default/manager_config_patch.yaml by adding under the spec: key the following patch:

spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: manager
        args:
        - "--config=controller_manager_config.yaml"
        volumeMounts:
        - name: manager-config
          mountPath: /controller_manager_config.yaml
          subPath: controller_manager_config.yaml
      volumes:
      - name: manager-config
        configMap:
          name: manager-config

Defining your Config

Now that you have a component config base project we need to customize the values that are passed into the controller, to do this we can take a look at config/manager/controller_manager_config.yaml.

controller_manager_config.yaml
apiVersion: controller-runtime.sigs.k8s.io/v1alpha1
kind: ControllerManagerConfig
metrics:
  bindAddress: 127.0.0.1:8080
webhook:
  port: 9443
leaderElection:
  leaderElect: true
  resourceName: 80807133.tutorial.kubebuilder.io

To see all the available fields you can look at the v1alpha Controller Runtime config ControllerManagerConfiguration

Using a Custom Type

If your project needs to accept additional non-controller runtime specific configurations, e.g. ClusterName, Region or anything serializable into yaml you can do this by using kubebuilder to create a new type and then updating your main.go to setup the new type for parsing.

The rest of this tutorial will walk through implementing a custom component config type.

Adding a new Config Type

To scaffold out a new config Kind, we can use kubebuilder create api.

kubebuilder create api --group config --version v2 --kind ProjectConfig --resource --controller=false --make=false

Then, run make build to implement the interface for your API type, which would generate the file zz_generated.deepcopy.go.

This will create a new type file in api/config/v2/ for the ProjectConfig kind. We’ll need to change this file to embed the v1alpha1.ControllerManagerConfigurationSpec

projectconfig_types.go
Apache License

Copyright 2020 The Kubernetes authors.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

We start out simply enough: we import the config/v1alpha1 API group, which is exposed through ControllerRuntime.

package v2

import (
	metav1 "k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/apis/meta/v1"
	cfg "sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/config/v1alpha1"
)

// +kubebuilder:object:root=true

Next, we’ll remove the default ProjectConfigSpec and ProjectConfigList then we’ll embed cfg.ControllerManagerConfigurationSpec in ProjectConfig.

// ProjectConfig is the Schema for the projectconfigs API
type ProjectConfig struct {
	metav1.TypeMeta `json:",inline"`

	// ControllerManagerConfigurationSpec returns the configurations for controllers
	cfg.ControllerManagerConfigurationSpec `json:",inline"`

	ClusterName string `json:"clusterName,omitempty"`
}

If you haven’t, you’ll also need to remove the ProjectConfigList from the SchemeBuilder.Register.

func init() {
	SchemeBuilder.Register(&ProjectConfig{})
}

Lastly, we’ll change the main.go to reference this type for parsing the file.

Updating main

Once you have defined your new custom component config type we need to make sure our new config type has been imported and the types are registered with the scheme. If you used kubebuilder create api this should have been automated.

import (
    // ... other imports
    configv2 "tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project/apis/config/v2"
    // +kubebuilder:scaffold:imports
)

With the package imported we can confirm the types have been added.

func init() {
	// ... other scheme registrations
	utilruntime.Must(configv2.AddToScheme(scheme))
	// +kubebuilder:scaffold:scheme
}

Lastly, we need to change the options parsing in main.go to use this new type. To do this we’ll chain OfKind onto ctrl.ConfigFile() and pass in a pointer to the config kind.

var err error
ctrlConfig := configv2.ProjectConfig{}
options := ctrl.Options{Scheme: scheme}
if configFile != "" {
    options, err = options.AndFrom(ctrl.ConfigFile().AtPath(configFile).OfKind(&ctrlConfig))
    if err != nil {
        setupLog.Error(err, "unable to load the config file")
        os.Exit(1)
    }
}

Now if you need to use the .clusterName field we defined in our custom kind you can call ctrlConfig.ClusterName which will be populated from the config file supplied.

Defining your Custom Config

Now that you have a custom component config we change the config/manager/controller_manager_config.yaml to use the new GVK you defined.

project/config/manager/controller_manager_config.yaml
apiVersion: controller-runtime.sigs.k8s.io/v1alpha1
kind: ControllerManagerConfig
metadata:
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: controllermanagerconfig
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: controller-manager-configuration
    app.kubernetes.io/component: manager
    app.kubernetes.io/created-by: project
    app.kubernetes.io/part-of: project
    app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: kustomize
health:
  healthProbeBindAddress: :8081
metrics:
  bindAddress: 127.0.0.1:8080
webhook:
  port: 9443
leaderElection:
  leaderElect: true
  resourceName: 80807133.tutorial.kubebuilder.io
clusterName: example-test

This type uses the new ProjectConfig kind under the GVK config.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/v2, with these custom configs we can add any yaml serializable fields that your controller needs and begin to reduce the reliance on flags to configure your project.

Migrations

Migrating between project structures in Kubebuilder generally involves a bit of manual work.

This section details what’s required to migrate, between different versions of Kubebuilder scaffolding, as well as to more complex project layout structures.

Migration guides from Legacy versions < 3.0.0

Follow the migration guides from the legacy Kubebuilder versions up the required latest v3x version. Note that from v3, a new ecosystem using plugins is introduced for better maintainability, reusability and user experience .

For more info, see the design docs of:

Also, you can check the Plugins section.

Kubebuilder v1 vs v2 (Legacy v1.0.0+ to v2.0.0 Kubebuilder CLI versions)

This document cover all breaking changes when migrating from v1 to v2.

The details of all changes (breaking or otherwise) can be found in controller-runtime, controller-tools and kubebuilder release notes.

Common changes

V2 project uses go modules. But kubebuilder will continue to support dep until go 1.13 is out.

controller-runtime

  • Client.List now uses functional options (List(ctx, list, ...option)) instead of List(ctx, ListOptions, list).

  • Client.DeleteAllOf was added to the Client interface.

  • Metrics are on by default now.

  • A number of packages under pkg/runtime have been moved, with their old locations deprecated. The old locations will be removed before controller-runtime v1.0.0. See the godocs for more information.

  • Automatic certificate generation for webhooks has been removed, and webhooks will no longer self-register. Use controller-tools to generate a webhook configuration. If you need certificate generation, we recommend using cert-manager. Kubebuilder v2 will scaffold out cert manager configs for you to use – see the Webhook Tutorial for more details.

  • The builder package now has separate builders for controllers and webhooks, which facilitates choosing which to run.

controller-tools

The generator framework has been rewritten in v2. It still works the same as before in many cases, but be aware that there are some breaking changes. Please check marker documentation for more details.

Kubebuilder

  • Kubebuilder v2 introduces a simplified project layout. You can find the design doc here.

  • In v1, the manager is deployed as a StatefulSet, while it’s deployed as a Deployment in v2.

  • The kubebuilder create webhook command was added to scaffold mutating/validating/conversion webhooks. It replaces the kubebuilder alpha webhook command.

  • v2 uses distroless/static instead of Ubuntu as base image. This reduces image size and attack surface.

  • v2 requires kustomize v3.1.0+.

Migration from v1 to v2

Make sure you understand the differences between Kubebuilder v1 and v2 before continuing

Please ensure you have followed the installation guide to install the required components.

The recommended way to migrate a v1 project is to create a new v2 project and copy over the API and the reconciliation code. The conversion will end up with a project that looks like a native v2 project. However, in some cases, it’s possible to do an in-place upgrade (i.e. reuse the v1 project layout, upgrading controller-runtime and controller-tools.

Let’s take as example an V1 project and migrate it to Kubebuilder v2. At the end, we should have something that looks like the example v2 project.

Preparation

We’ll need to figure out what the group, version, kind and domain are.

Let’s take a look at our current v1 project structure:

pkg/
├── apis
│   ├── addtoscheme_batch_v1.go
│   ├── apis.go
│   └── batch
│       ├── group.go
│       └── v1
│           ├── cronjob_types.go
│           ├── cronjob_types_test.go
│           ├── doc.go
│           ├── register.go
│           ├── v1_suite_test.go
│           └── zz_generated.deepcopy.go
├── controller
└── webhook

All of our API information is stored in pkg/apis/batch, so we can look there to find what we need to know.

In cronjob_types.go, we can find

type CronJob struct {...}

In register.go, we can find

SchemeGroupVersion = schema.GroupVersion{Group: "batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io", Version: "v1"}

Putting that together, we get CronJob as the kind, and batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io/v1 as the group-version

Initialize a v2 Project

Now, we need to initialize a v2 project. Before we do that, though, we’ll need to initialize a new go module if we’re not on the gopath:

go mod init tutorial.kubebuilder.io/project

Then, we can finish initializing the project with kubebuilder:

kubebuilder init --domain tutorial.kubebuilder.io

Migrate APIs and Controllers

Next, we’ll re-scaffold out the API types and controllers. Since we want both, we’ll say yes to both the API and controller prompts when asked what parts we want to scaffold:

kubebuilder create api --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob

If you’re using multiple groups, some manual work is required to migrate. Please follow this for more details.

Migrate the APIs

Now, let’s copy the API definition from pkg/apis/batch/v1/cronjob_types.go to api/v1/cronjob_types.go. We only need to copy the implementation of the Spec and Status fields.

We can replace the +k8s:deepcopy-gen:interfaces=... marker (which is deprecated in kubebuilder) with +kubebuilder:object:root=true.

We don’t need the following markers any more (they’re not used anymore, and are relics from much older versions of Kubebuilder):

// +genclient
// +k8s:openapi-gen=true

Our API types should look like the following:

// +kubebuilder:object:root=true
// +kubebuilder:subresource:status
// CronJob is the Schema for the cronjobs API
type CronJob struct {...}

// +kubebuilder:object:root=true

// CronJobList contains a list of CronJob
type CronJobList struct {...}

Migrate the Controllers

Now, let’s migrate the controller reconciler code from pkg/controller/cronjob/cronjob_controller.go to controllers/cronjob_controller.go.

We’ll need to copy

  • the fields from the ReconcileCronJob struct to CronJobReconciler
  • the contents of the Reconcile function
  • the rbac related markers to the new file.
  • the code under func add(mgr manager.Manager, r reconcile.Reconciler) error to func SetupWithManager

Migrate the Webhooks

If you don’t have a webhook, you can skip this section.

Webhooks for Core Types and External CRDs

If you are using webhooks for Kubernetes core types (e.g. Pods), or for an external CRD that is not owned by you, you can refer the controller-runtime example for builtin types and do something similar. Kubebuilder doesn’t scaffold much for these cases, but you can use the library in controller-runtime.

Scaffold Webhooks for our CRDs

Now let’s scaffold the webhooks for our CRD (CronJob). We’ll need to run the following command with the --defaulting and --programmatic-validation flags (since our test project uses defaulting and validating webhooks):

kubebuilder create webhook --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob --defaulting --programmatic-validation

Depending on how many CRDs need webhooks, we may need to run the above command multiple times with different Group-Version-Kinds.

Now, we’ll need to copy the logic for each webhook. For validating webhooks, we can copy the contents from func validatingCronJobFn in pkg/default_server/cronjob/validating/cronjob_create_handler.go to func ValidateCreate in api/v1/cronjob_webhook.go and then the same for update.

Similarly, we’ll copy from func mutatingCronJobFn to func Default.

Webhook Markers

When scaffolding webhooks, Kubebuilder v2 adds the following markers:

// These are v2 markers

// This is for the mutating webhook
// +kubebuilder:webhook:path=/mutate-batch-tutorial-kubebuilder-io-v1-cronjob,mutating=true,failurePolicy=fail,groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs,verbs=create;update,versions=v1,name=mcronjob.kb.io

...

// This is for the validating webhook
// +kubebuilder:webhook:path=/validate-batch-tutorial-kubebuilder-io-v1-cronjob,mutating=false,failurePolicy=fail,groups=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io,resources=cronjobs,verbs=create;update,versions=v1,name=vcronjob.kb.io

The default verbs are verbs=create;update. We need to ensure verbs matches what we need. For example, if we only want to validate creation, then we would change it to verbs=create.

We also need to ensure failure-policy is still the same.

Markers like the following are no longer needed (since they deal with self-deploying certificate configuration, which was removed in v2):

// v1 markers
// +kubebuilder:webhook:port=9876,cert-dir=/tmp/cert
// +kubebuilder:webhook:service=test-system:webhook-service,selector=app:webhook-server
// +kubebuilder:webhook:secret=test-system:webhook-server-secret
// +kubebuilder:webhook:mutating-webhook-config-name=test-mutating-webhook-cfg
// +kubebuilder:webhook:validating-webhook-config-name=test-validating-webhook-cfg

In v1, a single webhook marker may be split into multiple ones in the same paragraph. In v2, each webhook must be represented by a single marker.

Others

If there are any manual updates in main.go in v1, we need to port the changes to the new main.go. We’ll also need to ensure all of the needed schemes have been registered.

If there are additional manifests added under config directory, port them as well.

Change the image name in the Makefile if needed.

Verification

Finally, we can run make and make docker-build to ensure things are working fine.

Kubebuilder v2 vs v3 (Legacy Kubebuilder v2.0.0+ layout to 3.0.0+)

This document covers all breaking changes when migrating from v2 to v3.

The details of all changes (breaking or otherwise) can be found in controller-runtime, controller-tools and kb-releases release notes.

Common changes

v3 projects use Go modules and request Go 1.18+. Dep is no longer supported for dependency management.

Kubebuilder

  • Preliminary support for plugins was added. For more info see the Extensible CLI and Scaffolding Plugins: phase 1, the Extensible CLI and Scaffolding Plugins: phase 1.5 and the Extensible CLI and Scaffolding Plugins - Phase 2 design docs. Also, you can check the Plugins section.

  • The PROJECT file now has a new layout. It stores more information about what resources are in use, to better enable plugins to make useful decisions when scaffolding.

    Furthermore, the PROJECT file itself is now versioned: the version field corresponds to the version of the PROJECT file itself, while the layout field indicates the scaffolding & primary plugin version in use.

  • The version of the image gcr.io/kubebuilder/kube-rbac-proxy, which is an optional component enabled by default to secure the request made against the manager, was updated from 0.5.0 to 0.11.0 to address security concerns. The details of all changes can be found in kube-rbac-proxy.

TL;DR of the New go/v3 Plugin

More details on this can be found at here, but for the highlights, check below

  • Scaffolded/Generated API version changes:

    • Use apiextensions/v1 for generated CRDs (apiextensions/v1beta1 was deprecated in Kubernetes 1.16)
    • Use admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1 for generated webhooks (admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1 was deprecated in Kubernetes 1.16)
    • Use cert-manager.io/v1 for the certificate manager when webhooks are used (cert-manager.io/v1alpha2 was deprecated in Cert-Manager 0.14. More info: CertManager v1.0 docs)
  • Code changes:

    • The manager flags --metrics-addr and enable-leader-election now are named --metrics-bind-address and --leader-elect to be more aligned with core Kubernetes Components. More info: #1839
    • Liveness and Readiness probes are now added by default using healthz.Ping.
    • A new option to create the projects using ComponentConfig is introduced. For more info see its enhancement proposal and the Component config tutorial
    • Manager manifests now use SecurityContext to address security concerns. More info: #1637
  • Misc:

    • Support for controller-tools v0.9.0 (for go/v2 it is v0.3.0 and previously it was v0.2.5)
    • Support for controller-runtime v0.12.1 (for go/v2 it is v0.6.4 and previously it was v0.5.0)
    • Support for kustomize v3.8.7 (for go/v2 it is v3.5.4 and previously it was v3.1.0)
    • Required Envtest binaries are automatically downloaded
    • The minimum Go version is now 1.18 (previously it was 1.13).

Migrating to Kubebuilder v3

So you want to upgrade your scaffolding to use the latest and greatest features then, follow up the following guide which will cover the steps in the most straightforward way to allow you to upgrade your project to get all latest changes and improvements.

By updating the files manually

So you want to use the latest version of Kubebuilder CLI without changing your scaffolding then, check the following guide which will describe the manually steps required for you to upgrade only your PROJECT version and starts to use the plugins versions.

This way is more complex, susceptible to errors, and success cannot be assured. Also, by following these steps you will not get the improvements and bug fixes in the default generated project files.

You will check that you can still using the previous layout by using the go/v2 plugin which will not upgrade the controller-runtime and controller-tools to the latest version used with go/v3 becuase of its breaking changes. By checking this guide you know also how to manually change the files to use the go/v3 plugin and its dependencies versions.

Migration from v2 to v3

Make sure you understand the differences between Kubebuilder v2 and v3 before continuing.

Please ensure you have followed the installation guide to install the required components.

The recommended way to migrate a v2 project is to create a new v3 project and copy over the API and the reconciliation code. The conversion will end up with a project that looks like a native v3 project. However, in some cases, it’s possible to do an in-place upgrade (i.e. reuse the v2 project layout, upgrading controller-runtime and controller-tools).

Initialize a v3 Project

Create a new directory with the name of your project. Note that this name is used in the scaffolds to create the name of your manager Pod and of the Namespace where the Manager is deployed by default.

$ mkdir migration-project-name
$ cd migration-project-name

Now, we need to initialize a v3 project. Before we do that, though, we’ll need to initialize a new go module if we’re not on the GOPATH. While technically this is not needed inside GOPATH, it is still recommended.

go mod init tutorial.kubebuilder.io/migration-project

Then, we can finish initializing the project with kubebuilder.

kubebuilder init --domain tutorial.kubebuilder.io

Migrate APIs and Controllers

Next, we’ll re-scaffold out the API types and controllers.

kubebuilder create api --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob

Migrate the APIs

Now, let’s copy the API definition from api/v1/<kind>_types.go in our old project to the new one.

These files have not been modified by the new plugin, so you should be able to replace your freshly scaffolded files by your old one. There may be some cosmetic changes. So you can choose to only copy the types themselves.

Migrate the Controllers

Now, let’s migrate the controller code from controllers/cronjob_controller.go in our old project to the new one. There is a breaking change and there may be some cosmetic changes.

The new Reconcile method receives the context as an argument now, instead of having to create it with context.Background(). You can copy the rest of the code in your old controller to the scaffolded methods replacing:

func (r *CronJobReconciler) Reconcile(req ctrl.Request) (ctrl.Result, error) {
    ctx := context.Background() 
    log := r.Log.WithValues("cronjob", req.NamespacedName)

With:

func (r *CronJobReconciler) Reconcile(ctx context.Context, req ctrl.Request) (ctrl.Result, error) {
	log := r.Log.WithValues("cronjob", req.NamespacedName)

Migrate the Webhooks

Now let’s scaffold the webhooks for our CRD (CronJob). We’ll need to run the following command with the --defaulting and --programmatic-validation flags (since our test project uses defaulting and validating webhooks):

kubebuilder create webhook --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob --defaulting --programmatic-validation

Now, let’s copy the webhook definition from api/v1/<kind>_webhook.go from our old project to the new one.

Others

If there are any manual updates in main.go in v2, we need to port the changes to the new main.go. We’ll also need to ensure all of the needed schemes have been registered.

If there are additional manifests added under config directory, port them as well.

Change the image name in the Makefile if needed.

Verification

Finally, we can run make and make docker-build to ensure things are working fine.

Migration from v2 to v3 by updating the files manually

Make sure you understand the differences between Kubebuilder v2 and v3 before continuing

Please ensure you have followed the installation guide to install the required components.

The following guide describes the manual steps required to upgrade your config version and start using the plugin-enabled version.

This way is more complex, susceptible to errors, and success cannot be assured. Also, by following these steps you will not get the improvements and bug fixes in the default generated project files.

Usually you will only try to do it manually if you customized your project and deviated too much from the proposed scaffold. Before continuing, ensure that you understand the note about project customizations. Note that you might need to spend more effort to do this process manually than organize your project customizations to follow up the proposed layout and keep your project maintainable and upgradable with less effort in the future.

The recommended upgrade approach is to follow the Migration Guide v2 to V3 instead.

Migration from project config version “2” to “3”

Migrating between project configuration versions involves additions, removals, and/or changes to fields in your project’s PROJECT file, which is created by running the init command.

The PROJECT file now has a new layout. It stores more information about what resources are in use, to better enable plugins to make useful decisions when scaffolding.

Furthermore, the PROJECT file itself is now versioned. The version field corresponds to the version of the PROJECT file itself, while the layout field indicates the scaffolding and the primary plugin version in use.

Steps to migrate

The following steps describe the manual changes required to bring the project configuration file (PROJECT). These change will add the information that Kubebuilder would add when generating the file. This file can be found in the root directory.

Add the projectName

The project name is the name of the project directory in lowercase:

...
projectName: example
...

Add the layout

The default plugin layout which is equivalent to the previous version is go.kubebuilder.io/v2:

...
layout:
- go.kubebuilder.io/v2
...

Update the version

The version field represents the version of project’s layout. Update this to "3":

...
version: "3"
...

Add the resource data

The attribute resources represents the list of resources scaffolded in your project.

You will need to add the following data for each resource added to the project.

Add the Kubernetes API version by adding resources[entry].api.crdVersion: v1beta1:
...
resources:
- api:
    ...
    crdVersion: v1beta1
  domain: my.domain
  group: webapp
  kind: Guestbook
  ...
Add the scope used do scaffold the CRDs by adding resources[entry].api.namespaced: true unless they were cluster-scoped:
...
resources:
- api:
    ...
    namespaced: true
  group: webapp
  kind: Guestbook
  ...
If you have a controller scaffolded for the API then, add resources[entry].controller: true:
...
resources:
- api:
    ...
  controller: true
  group: webapp
  kind: Guestbook
Add the resource domain such as resources[entry].domain: testproject.org which usually will be the project domain unless the API scaffold is a core type and/or an external type:
...
resources:
- api:
    ...
  domain: testproject.org
  group: webapp
  kind: Guestbook

Note that you will only need to add the domain if your project has a scaffold for a core type API which the Domain value is not empty in Kubernetes API group qualified scheme definition. (For example, see here that for Kinds from the API apps it has not a domain when see here that for Kinds from the API authentication its domain is k8s.io )

Check the following the list to know the core types supported and its domain:

Core TypeDomain
admission“k8s.io”
admissionregistration“k8s.io”
appsempty
auditregistration“k8s.io”
apiextensions“k8s.io”
authentication“k8s.io”
authorization“k8s.io”
autoscalingempty
batchempty
certificates“k8s.io”
coordination“k8s.io”
coreempty
events“k8s.io”
extensionsempty
imagepolicy“k8s.io”
networking“k8s.io”
node“k8s.io”
metrics“k8s.io”
policyempty
rbac.authorization“k8s.io”
scheduling“k8s.io”
setting“k8s.io”
storage“k8s.io”

Following an example where a controller was scaffold for the core type Kind Deployment via the command create api --group apps --version v1 --kind Deployment --controller=true --resource=false --make=false:

- controller: true
  group: apps
  kind: Deployment
  path: k8s.io/api/apps/v1
  version: v1
Add the resources[entry].path with the import path for the api:
...
resources:
- api:
    ...
  ...
  group: webapp
  kind: Guestbook
  path: example/api/v1
If your project is using webhooks then, add resources[entry].webhooks.[type]: true for each type generated and then, add resources[entry].webhooks.webhookVersion: v1beta1:
resources:
- api:
    ...
  ...
  group: webapp
  kind: Guestbook
  webhooks:
    defaulting: true
    validation: true
    webhookVersion: v1beta1

Check your PROJECT file

Now ensure that your PROJECT file has the same information when the manifests are generated via Kubebuilder V3 CLI.

For the QuickStart example, the PROJECT file manually updated to use go.kubebuilder.io/v2 would look like:

domain: my.domain
layout:
- go.kubebuilder.io/v2
projectName: example
repo: example
resources:
- api:
    crdVersion: v1
    namespaced: true
  controller: true
  domain: my.domain
  group: webapp
  kind: Guestbook
  path: example/api/v1
  version: v1
version: "3"

You can check the differences between the previous layout(version 2) and the current format(version 3) with the go.kubebuilder.io/v2 by comparing an example scenario which involves more than one API and webhook, see:

Example (Project version 2)

domain: testproject.org
repo: sigs.k8s.io/kubebuilder/example
resources:
- group: crew
  kind: Captain
  version: v1
- group: crew
  kind: FirstMate
  version: v1
- group: crew
  kind: Admiral
  version: v1
version: "2"

Example (Project version 3)

domain: testproject.org
layout:
- go.kubebuilder.io/v2
projectName: example
repo: sigs.k8s.io/kubebuilder/example
resources:
- api:
    crdVersion: v1
    namespaced: true
  controller: true
  domain: testproject.org
  group: crew
  kind: Captain
  path: example/api/v1
  version: v1
  webhooks:
    defaulting: true
    validation: true
    webhookVersion: v1
- api:
    crdVersion: v1
    namespaced: true
  controller: true
  domain: testproject.org
  group: crew
  kind: FirstMate
  path: example/api/v1
  version: v1
  webhooks:
    conversion: true
    webhookVersion: v1
- api:
    crdVersion: v1
  controller: true
  domain: testproject.org
  group: crew
  kind: Admiral
  path: example/api/v1
  plural: admirales
  version: v1
  webhooks:
    defaulting: true
    webhookVersion: v1
version: "3"

Verification

In the steps above, you updated only the PROJECT file which represents the project configuration. This configuration is useful only for the CLI tool. It should not affect how your project behaves.

There is no option to verify that you properly updated the configuration file. The best way to ensure the configuration file has the correct V3+ fields is to initialize a project with the same API(s), controller(s), and webhook(s) in order to compare generated configuration with the manually changed configuration.

If you made mistakes in the above process, you will likely face issues using the CLI.

Update your project to use go/v3 plugin

Migrating between project plugins involves additions, removals, and/or changes to files created by any plugin-supported command, e.g. init and create. A plugin supports one or more project config versions; make sure you upgrade your project’s config version to the latest supported by your target plugin version before upgrading plugin versions.

The following steps describe the manual changes required to modify the project’s layout enabling your project to use the go/v3 plugin. These steps will not help you address all the bug fixes of the already generated scaffolds.

Steps to migrate

Update your plugin version into the PROJECT file

Before updating the layout, please ensure you have followed the above steps to upgrade your Project version to 3. Once you have upgraded the project version, update the layout to the new plugin version go.kubebuilder.io/v3 as follows:

domain: my.domain
layout:
- go.kubebuilder.io/v3
...

Upgrade the Go version and its dependencies:

Ensure that your go.mod is using Go version 1.15 and the following dependency versions:

module example

go 1.18

require (
    github.com/onsi/ginkgo/v2 v2.1.4
    github.com/onsi/gomega v1.19.0
    k8s.io/api v0.24.0
    k8s.io/apimachinery v0.24.0
    k8s.io/client-go v0.24.0
    sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime v0.12.1
)

Update the golang image

In the Dockerfile, replace:

# Build the manager binary
FROM golang:1.13 as builder

With:

# Build the manager binary
FROM golang:1.16 as builder

Update your Makefile

To allow controller-gen to scaffold the nw Kubernetes APIs

To allow controller-gen and the scaffolding tool to use the new API versions, replace:

CRD_OPTIONS ?= "crd:trivialVersions=true"

With:

CRD_OPTIONS ?= "crd"
To allow automatic downloads

To allow downloading the newer versions of the Kubernetes binaries required by Envtest into the testbin/ directory of your project instead of the global setup, replace:

# Run tests
test: generate fmt vet manifests
	go test ./... -coverprofile cover.out

With:

# Setting SHELL to bash allows bash commands to be executed by recipes.
# Options are set to exit when a recipe line exits non-zero or a piped command fails.
SHELL = /usr/bin/env bash -o pipefail
.SHELLFLAGS = -ec

ENVTEST_ASSETS_DIR=$(shell pwd)/testbin
test: manifests generate fmt vet ## Run tests.
	mkdir -p ${ENVTEST_ASSETS_DIR}
	test -f ${ENVTEST_ASSETS_DIR}/setup-envtest.sh || curl -sSLo ${ENVTEST_ASSETS_DIR}/setup-envtest.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/controller-runtime/v0.8.3/hack/setup-envtest.sh
	source ${ENVTEST_ASSETS_DIR}/setup-envtest.sh; fetch_envtest_tools $(ENVTEST_ASSETS_DIR); setup_envtest_env $(ENVTEST_ASSETS_DIR); go test ./... -coverprofile cover.out
To upgrade controller-gen and kustomize dependencies versions used

To upgrade the controller-gen and kustomize version used to generate the manifests replace:

# find or download controller-gen
# download controller-gen if necessary
controller-gen:
ifeq (, $(shell which controller-gen))
	@{ \
	set -e ;\
	CONTROLLER_GEN_TMP_DIR=$$(mktemp -d) ;\
	cd $$CONTROLLER_GEN_TMP_DIR ;\
	go mod init tmp ;\
	go get sigs.k8s.io/controller-tools/cmd/controller-gen@v0.2.5 ;\
	rm -rf $$CONTROLLER_GEN_TMP_DIR ;\
	}
CONTROLLER_GEN=$(GOBIN)/controller-gen
else
CONTROLLER_GEN=$(shell which controller-gen)
endif

With:

##@ Build Dependencies

## Location to install dependencies to
LOCALBIN ?= $(shell pwd)/bin
$(LOCALBIN):
	mkdir -p $(LOCALBIN)

## Tool Binaries
KUSTOMIZE ?= $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize
CONTROLLER_GEN ?= $(LOCALBIN)/controller-gen
ENVTEST ?= $(LOCALBIN)/setup-envtest

## Tool Versions
KUSTOMIZE_VERSION ?= v3.8.7
CONTROLLER_TOOLS_VERSION ?= v0.9.0

KUSTOMIZE_INSTALL_SCRIPT ?= "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize/master/hack/install_kustomize.sh"
.PHONY: kustomize
kustomize: $(KUSTOMIZE) ## Download kustomize locally if necessary.
$(KUSTOMIZE): $(LOCALBIN)
	test -s $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize || { curl -Ss $(KUSTOMIZE_INSTALL_SCRIPT) | bash -s -- $(subst v,,$(KUSTOMIZE_VERSION)) $(LOCALBIN); }

.PHONY: controller-gen
controller-gen: $(CONTROLLER_GEN) ## Download controller-gen locally if necessary.
$(CONTROLLER_GEN): $(LOCALBIN)
	test -s $(LOCALBIN)/controller-gen || GOBIN=$(LOCALBIN) go install sigs.k8s.io/controller-tools/cmd/controller-gen@$(CONTROLLER_TOOLS_VERSION)

.PHONY: envtest
envtest: $(ENVTEST) ## Download envtest-setup locally if necessary.
$(ENVTEST): $(LOCALBIN)
	test -s $(LOCALBIN)/setup-envtest || GOBIN=$(LOCALBIN) go install sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/tools/setup-envtest@latest

And then, to make your project use the kustomize version defined in the Makefile, replace all usage of kustomize with $(KUSTOMIZE)

Update your controllers

Replace:

func (r *<MyKind>Reconciler) Reconcile(req ctrl.Request) (ctrl.Result, error) {
    ctx := context.Background()
    log := r.Log.WithValues("cronjob", req.NamespacedName)

With:

func (r *<MyKind>Reconciler) Reconcile(ctx context.Context, req ctrl.Request) (ctrl.Result, error) {
    log := r.Log.WithValues("cronjob", req.NamespacedName)

Update your controller and webhook test suite

Replace:

	. "github.com/onsi/ginkgo"

With:

	. "github.com/onsi/ginkgo/v2"

Also, adjust your test suite.

For Controller Suite:

	RunSpecsWithDefaultAndCustomReporters(t,
		"Controller Suite",
		[]Reporter{printer.NewlineReporter{}})

With:

	RunSpecs(t, "Controller Suite")

For Webhook Suite:

	RunSpecsWithDefaultAndCustomReporters(t,
		"Webhook Suite",
		[]Reporter{printer.NewlineReporter{}})

With:

	RunSpecs(t, "Webhook Suite")

Last but not least, remove the timeout variable from the BeforeSuite blocks:

Replace:

var _ = BeforeSuite(func(done Done) {
	....
}, 60)

With

var _ = BeforeSuite(func(done Done) {
	....
})

Change Logger to use flag options

In the main.go file replace:

flag.Parse()

ctrl.SetLogger(zap.New(zap.UseDevMode(true)))

With:

opts := zap.Options{
	Development: true,
}
opts.BindFlags(flag.CommandLine)
flag.Parse()

ctrl.SetLogger(zap.New(zap.UseFlagOptions(&opts)))

Rename the manager flags

The manager flags --metrics-addr and enable-leader-election were renamed to --metrics-bind-address and --leader-elect to be more aligned with core Kubernetes Components. More info: #1839.

In your main.go file replace:

func main() {
	var metricsAddr string
	var enableLeaderElection bool
	flag.StringVar(&metricsAddr, "metrics-addr", ":8080", "The address the metric endpoint binds to.")
	flag.BoolVar(&enableLeaderElection, "enable-leader-election", false,
		"Enable leader election for controller manager. "+
			"Enabling this will ensure there is only one active controller manager.")

With:

func main() {
	var metricsAddr string
	var enableLeaderElection bool
	flag.StringVar(&metricsAddr, "metrics-bind-address", ":8080", "The address the metric endpoint binds to.")
	flag.BoolVar(&enableLeaderElection, "leader-elect", false,
		"Enable leader election for controller manager. "+
			"Enabling this will ensure there is only one active controller manager.")

And then, rename the flags in the config/default/manager_auth_proxy_patch.yaml and config/default/manager.yaml:

- name: manager
args:
- "--health-probe-bind-address=:8081"
- "--metrics-bind-address=127.0.0.1:8080"
- "--leader-elect"

Verification

Finally, we can run make and make docker-build to ensure things are working fine.

Change your project to remove the Kubernetes deprecated API versions usage

The following steps describe a workflow to upgrade your project to remove the deprecated Kubernetes APIs: apiextensions.k8s.io/v1beta1, admissionregistration.k8s.io/v1beta1, cert-manager.io/v1alpha2.

The Kubebuilder CLI tool does not support scaffolded resources for both Kubernetes API versions such as; an API/CRD with apiextensions.k8s.io/v1beta1 and another one with apiextensions.k8s.io/v1.

The first step is to update your PROJECT file by replacing the api.crdVersion:v1beta and webhooks.WebhookVersion:v1beta with api.crdVersion:v1 and webhooks.WebhookVersion:v1 which would look like:

domain: my.domain
layout: go.kubebuilder.io/v3
projectName: example
repo: example
resources:
- api:
    crdVersion: v1
    namespaced: true
  group: webapp
  kind: Guestbook
  version: v1
  webhooks:
    defaulting: true
    webhookVersion: v1
version: "3"

You can try to re-create the APIS(CRDs) and Webhooks manifests by using the --force flag.

Now, re-create the APIS(CRDs) and Webhooks manifests by running the kubebuilder create api and kubebuilder create webhook for the same group, kind and versions with the flag --force, respectively.

V3 - Plugins Layout Migration Guides

Following the migration guides from the plugins versions. Note that the plugins ecosystem was introduced with Kubebuilder v3.0.0 release where the go/v3 version is the default layout since 28 Apr 2021.

Therefore, you can check here how to migrate the projects built from Kubebuilder 3.x with the plugin go/v3 to the latest.

go/v3 vs go/v4

This document covers all breaking changes when migrating from projects built using the plugin go/v3 (default for any scaffold done since 28 Apr 2021) to the next alpha version of the Golang plugin go/v4.

The details of all changes (breaking or otherwise) can be found in:

Common changes

  • go/v4 projects use Kustomize v5x (instead of v3x)
  • note that some manifests under config/ directory have been changed in order to no longer use the deprecated Kustomize features such as env vars.
  • A kustomization.yaml is scaffolded under config/samples. This helps simply and flexibly generate sample manifests: kustomize build config/samples.
  • adds support for Apple Silicon M1 (darwin/arm64)
  • remove support to CRD/WebHooks Kubernetes API v1beta1 version which are no longer supported since k8s 1.22
  • no longer scaffold webhook test files with "k8s.io/api/admission/v1beta1" the k8s API which is no longer served since k8s 1.25. By default webhooks test files are scaffolding using "k8s.io/api/admission/v1" which is support from k8s 1.20
  • no longer provide backwards compatible support with k8s versions < 1.16
  • change the layout to accommodate the community request to follow the Standard Go Project Layout by moving the api(s) under a new directory called api, controller(s) under a new directory called internal and the main.go under a new directory named cmd

TL;DR of the New go/v4 Plugin

More details on this can be found at here, but for the highlights, check below

Migrating to Kubebuilder go/v4

If you want to upgrade your scaffolding to use the latest and greatest features then, follow the guide which will cover the steps in the most straightforward way to allow you to upgrade your project to get all latest changes and improvements.

By updating the files manually

If you want to use the latest version of Kubebuilder CLI without changing your scaffolding then, check the following guide which will describe the steps to be performed manually to upgrade only your PROJECT version and start using the plugins versions.

This way is more complex, susceptible to errors, and success cannot be assured. Also, by following these steps you will not get the improvements and bug fixes in the default generated project files.

Migration from go/v3 to go/v4

Make sure you understand the differences between Kubebuilder go/v3 and go/v4 before continuing.

Please ensure you have followed the installation guide to install the required components.

The recommended way to migrate a go/v3 project is to create a new go/v4 project and copy over the API and the reconciliation code. The conversion will end up with a project that looks like a native go/v4 project layout (latest version).

However, in some cases, it’s possible to do an in-place upgrade (i.e. reuse the go/v3 project layout, upgrading the PROJECT file, and scaffolds manually). For further information see Migration from go/v3 to go/v4 by updating the files manually

Initialize a go/v4 Project

Create a new directory with the name of your project. Note that this name is used in the scaffolds to create the name of your manager Pod and of the Namespace where the Manager is deployed by default.

$ mkdir migration-project-name
$ cd migration-project-name

Now, we need to initialize a go/v4 project. Before we do that, we’ll need to initialize a new go module if we’re not on the GOPATH. While technically this is not needed inside GOPATH, it is still recommended.

go mod init tutorial.kubebuilder.io/migration-project

Now, we can finish initializing the project with kubebuilder.

kubebuilder init --domain tutorial.kubebuilder.io --plugins=go/v4

Migrate APIs and Controllers

Next, we’ll re-scaffold out the API types and controllers.

kubebuilder create api --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob

Migrate the APIs

Now, let’s copy the API definition from api/v1/<kind>_types.go in our old project to the new one.

These files have not been modified by the new plugin, so you should be able to replace your freshly scaffolded files by your old one. There may be some cosmetic changes. So you can choose to only copy the types themselves.

Migrate the Controllers

Now, let’s migrate the controller code from controllers/cronjob_controller.go in our old project to the new one.

Migrate the Webhooks

Now let’s scaffold the webhooks for our CRD (CronJob). We’ll need to run the following command with the --defaulting and --programmatic-validation flags (since our test project uses defaulting and validating webhooks):

kubebuilder create webhook --group batch --version v1 --kind CronJob --defaulting --programmatic-validation

Now, let’s copy the webhook definition from api/v1/<kind>_webhook.go from our old project to the new one.

Others

If there are any manual updates in main.go in v3, we need to port the changes to the new main.go. We’ll also need to ensure all of needed controller-runtime schemes have been registered.

If there are additional manifests added under config directory, port them as well. Please, be aware that the new version go/v4 uses Kustomize v5x and no longer Kustomize v4. Therefore, if added customized implementations in the config you need to ensure that them can work with Kustomize v5 and/if not update/upgrade any breaking change that you might face.

In v4, installation of Kustomize has been changed from bash script to go get. Change the kustomize dependency in Makefile to

.PHONY: kustomize
kustomize: $(KUSTOMIZE) ## Download kustomize locally if necessary. If wrong version is installed, it will be removed before downloading.
$(KUSTOMIZE): $(LOCALBIN)
	@if test -x $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize && ! $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize version | grep -q $(KUSTOMIZE_VERSION); then \
		echo "$(LOCALBIN)/kustomize version is not expected $(KUSTOMIZE_VERSION). Removing it before installing."; \
		rm -rf $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize; \
	fi
	test -s $(LOCALBIN)/kustomize || GOBIN=$(LOCALBIN) GO111MODULE=on go install sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kustomize/v5@$(KUSTOMIZE_VERSION)

Change the image name in the Makefile if needed.

Verification

Finally, we can run make and make docker-build to ensure things are working fine.

Migration from go/v3 to go/v4 by updating the files manually

Make sure you understand the differences between Kubebuilder go/v3 and go/v4 before continuing.

Please ensure you have followed the installation guide to install the required components.

The following guide describes the manual steps required to upgrade your PROJECT config file to begin using go/v4.

This way is more complex, susceptible to errors, and success cannot be assured. Also, by following these steps you will not get the improvements and bug fixes in the default generated project files.

Usually it is suggested to do it manually if you have customized your project and deviated too much from the proposed scaffold. Before continuing, ensure that you understand the note about [project customizations][project-customizations]. Note that you might need to spend more effort to do this process manually than to organize your project customizations. The proposed layout will keep your project maintainable and upgradable with less effort in the future.

The recommended upgrade approach is to follow the Migration Guide go/v3 to go/v4 instead.

Migration from project config version “go/v3” to “go/v4”

Update the PROJECT file layout which stores information about the resources that are used to enable plugins make useful decisions while scaffolding. The layout field indicates the scaffolding and the primary plugin version in use.

Steps to migrate

Migrate the layout version into the PROJECT file

The following steps describe the manual changes required to bring the project configuration file (PROJECT). These change will add the information that Kubebuilder would add when generating the file. This file can be found in the root directory.

Update the PROJECT file by replacing:

layout:
- go.kubebuilder.io/v3

With:

layout:
- go.kubebuilder.io/v4

Changes to the layout

New layout:
  • The directory apis was renamed to api to follow the standard
  • The controller(s) directory has been moved under a new directory called internal and renamed to singular as well controller
  • The main.go previously scaffolded in the root directory has been moved under a new directory called cmd

Therefore, you can check the changes in the layout results into:

...
├── cmd
│ └── main.go
├── internal
│ └── controller
└── api
Migrating to the new layout:
  • Create a new directory cmd and move the main.go under it.
  • If your project support multi-group the APIs are scaffold under a directory called apis. Rename this directory to api
  • Move the controllers directory under the internal and rename it for controller
  • Now ensure that the imports will be updated accordingly by:
    • Update the main.go imports to look for the new path of your controllers under the internal/controller directory

Then, let’s update the scaffolds paths

  • Update the Dockerfile to ensure that you will have:
COPY cmd/main.go cmd/main.go
COPY api/ api/
COPY internal/controller/ internal/controller/

Then, replace:

RUN CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=${TARGETOS:-linux} GOARCH=${TARGETARCH} go build -a -o manager main.go

With:

RUN CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=${TARGETOS:-linux} GOARCH=${TARGETARCH} go build -a -o manager cmd/main.go
  • Update the Makefile targets to build and run the manager by replacing:
.PHONY: build
build: manifests generate fmt vet ## Build manager binary.
	go build -o bin/manager main.go

.PHONY: run
run: manifests generate fmt vet ## Run a controller from your host.
	go run ./main.go

With:

.PHONY: build
build: manifests generate fmt vet ## Build manager binary.
	go build -o bin/manager cmd/main.go

.PHONY: run
run: manifests generate fmt vet ## Run a controller from your host.
	go run ./cmd/main.go
  • Update the internal/controller/suite_test.go to set the path for the CRDDirectoryPaths:

Replace:

CRDDirectoryPaths:     []string{filepath.Join("..", "config", "crd", "bases")},

With:

CRDDirectoryPaths:     []string{filepath.Join("..", "..", "config", "crd", "bases")},

Note that if your project has multiple groups (multigroup:true) then the above update should result into "..", "..", "..", instead of "..",".."

Now, let’s update the PATHs in the PROJECT file accordingly

The PROJECT tracks the paths of all APIs used in your project. Ensure that they now point to api/... as the following example:

Before update:

  group: crew
  kind: Captain
  path: sigs.k8s.io/kubebuilder/testdata/project-v4/apis/crew/v1

After Update:


  group: crew
  kind: Captain
  path: sigs.k8s.io/kubebuilder/testdata/project-v4/api/crew/v1

Update kustomize manifests with the changes made so far

  • Update the manifest under config/ directory with all changes performed in the default scaffold done with go/v4 plugin. (see for example testdata/project-v4/config/) to get all changes in the default scaffolds to be applied on your project
  • Create config/samples/kustomization.yaml with all Custom Resources samples specified into config/samples. (see for example testdata/project-v4/config/samples/kustomization.yaml)

If you have webhooks:

Replace the import admissionv1beta1 "k8s.io/api/admission/v1beta1" with admissionv1 "k8s.io/api/admission/v1" in the webhook test files

Makefile updates

Update the Makefile with the changes which can be found in the samples under testdata for the release tag used. (see for example testdata/project-v4/Makefile)

Update the dependencies

Update the go.mod with the changes which can be found in the samples under testdata for the release tag used. (see for example testdata/project-v4/go.mod). Then, run go mod tidy to ensure that you get the latest dependencies and your Golang code has no breaking changes.

Verification

In the steps above, you updated your project manually with the goal of ensuring that it follows the changes in the layout introduced with the go/v4 plugin that update the scaffolds.

There is no option to verify that you properly updated the PROJECT file of your project. The best way to ensure that everything is updated correctly, would be to initialize a project using the go/v4 plugin, (ie) using kubebuilder init --domain tutorial.kubebuilder.io plugins=go/v4 and generating the same API(s), controller(s), and webhook(s) in order to compare the generated configuration with the manually changed configuration.

Also, after all updates you would run the following commands:

  • make manifests (to re-generate the files using the latest version of the contrller-gen after you update the Makefile)
  • make all (to ensure that you are able to build and perform all operations)

Single Group to Multi-Group

Let’s migrate the CronJob example.

To change the layout of your project to support Multi-Group run the command kubebuilder edit --multigroup=true. Once you switch to a multi-group layout, the new Kinds will be generated in the new layout but additional manual work is needed to move the old API groups to the new layout.

Generally, we use the prefix for the API group as the directory name. We can check api/v1/groupversion_info.go to find that out:

// +groupName=batch.tutorial.kubebuilder.io
package v1

Then, we’ll rename move our existing APIs into a new subdirectory, “batch”:

mkdir api/batch
mv api/* api/batch

After moving the APIs to a new directory, the same needs to be applied to the controllers. For go/v4:

mkdir internal/controller/batch
mv internal/controller/* internal/controller/batch/