Introduction

This article will walk the user through the process of listing Pods and Namespaces in a Kubernetes cluster with the help of go-client sdk.

Kubernetes has a powerful, well-designed API to interact with the cluster functionality. We can list, create, update, delete, and watch all kinds of Kubernetes resources using the Kubernetes APIs. In addition, we can do anything that we can do with the kubectl command line interface with the APIs.

To make things easier for developers who want to extend and leverage the functionality provided by Kubernetes, the community has provided Software Development Kits for all major programming languages like python, golang, dotnet, javascript, and C. You can check out the entire list of supported languages here.

Table of Contents:

• Communicating with the Kubernetes API server
• Creating a client to communicate with the Kubernetes API server
• Listing Kubernetes Pods by Namespace(s)
• Lisitng Kubernetes Namespaces
• Assembling the Pieces
• Installing the Dependencies and Testing
• Conclusion

Communicating with the Kubernetes API server

There are two ways of communicating with the Kubernetes API server using the go-client SDK. One way is using the in-client cluster communication. For this to work out, the code needs to be running inside a Kubernetes Pods, and it should have access to execute the required functionality like creating/deleting Pods via a service account.

The other way is to use the configuration called out-of-cluster client configuration. This generally works when we are performing development in the local machine, outside of a Kubernetes cluster. However, we need a Kubernetes cluster to perform these actions using the code, like creating/deleting Pods.

In this setup, we will communicate with the K8s API server from outside the cluster. This configuration is called out-of-cluster client configuration. In this method, the SDK communicates with the Kubernetes API server using the configuration provided the current context in the local kubeconfig file generally stored in the location ~/.kube/config.

Creating a client to communicate with the Kubernetes API server

Kubernetes go-client SDK provides functionality to create a client to talk with the Kubernetes API server. Using this client, we use functionality like listing Pods and Namespaces. So let’s dive right in. We will explain the stuff as we go ahead.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "os"
    "path/filepath"
    "k8s.io/client-go/kubernetes"
    "k8s.io/client-go/tools/clientcmd"
)

func main() {
    userHomeDir, err := os.UserHomeDir()
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Printf("error getting user home dir: %v\n", err)
        os.Exit(1)
    }
    kubeConfigPath := filepath.Join(userHomeDir, ".kube", "config")
    fmt.Printf("Using kubeconfig: %s\n", kubeConfigPath)

    kubeConfig, err := clientcmd.BuildConfigFromFlags("", kubeConfigPath)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Printf("Error getting kubernetes config: %v\n", err)
        os.Exit(1)
    }

    clientset, err := kubernetes.NewForConfig(kubeConfig)

    if err != nil {
        fmt.Printf("error getting kubernetes config: %v\n", err)
        os.Exit(1)
    }
}

In the code snippet, we get the user’s home directory using the function os.UserHomeDir() and then acquire the path to the ~/.kube/config file. We then pass the kubeConfigPath to the clientcmd.BuildConfigFromFlags() function, which returns a kubeconfig object next up calling the kubernetes.NewForConfig(kubeConfig) returns us the clientset, and an error object. If the err is nil, we have the client object, which we will use to further list Pods/Namespaces in the following sections.

Listing Kubernetes Pods by Namespace(s)

In the previous section, we created a Kubernetes client. Now we will be using it to perform actions on the Kubernetes resources. For example, this section will use the client to list Kubernetes Pods by namespace(s). First, let’s review the function we will use to list Pods.

function ListPods(namespace string, client kubernetes.Interface) (*v1.PodList, error) {
    fmt.Println("Get Kubernetes Pods")
    pods, err := client.CoreV1().Pods(namespace).List(context.Background(), metav1.ListOptions{})
    if err != nil {
        err = fmt.Errorf("error getting pods: %v\n", err)
        return nil, err
    }
    return pods, nil
}

The ListPods function takes in a namespace parameter of type string. This variable can take the name of a namespace, or we can pass an empty string "" to list Pods across all namespaces. The second parameter, client, is the Kubernetes client of type kubernetes.Interface. Finally, the function returns two parameters. The first is of type *v1.PodList, a pointer to the Pod List and an error data type. If there are no errors, the error will return a nil.

Next, let’s see how we can call this function from the main() part.

    ...
    // An empty string returns all namespaces
    namespace := "kube-system"
    pods, err := ListPods(namespace, clientset)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println(err.Error)
        os.Exit(1)
    }
    for _, pod := range pods.Items {
        fmt.Printf("Pod name: %v\n", pod.Name)
    }
    var message string
    if namespace == "" {
        message = "Total Pods in all namespaces"
    } else {
        message = fmt.Sprintf("Total Pods in namespace `%s`", namespace)
    }
    fmt.Printf("%s %d\n", message, len(pods.Items))
    ...

The namespace variable holds the name of the namespace whose Pods we want to list. If we pass it an empty string, we can list all Pod across namespaces will be listed, given the user has permission to access all namespaces. Next, we check the err variable to see if we have any errors and exit. Since the ListPods function returns a list of Pods, we can iterate over this list in the for loop and print the name using the pod.Name. Finally, we are printing the number of Pods returned using the len(pods.Items).

Lisitng Kubernetes Namespaces

In the previous section, we listed the Pods for a given namespace. In this section, we will be using the Kubernetes client to list all Namespaces. So first, let’s go through the function we will use to list Namespaces.

func ListNamespaces(client kubernetes.Interface) (*v1.NamespaceList, error) {
    fmt.Println("Get Kubernetes Namespaces")
    namespaces, err := client.CoreV1().Namespaces().List(context.Background(), metav1.ListOptions{})
    if err != nil {
        err = fmt.Errorf("error getting namespaces: %v\n", err)
        return nil, err
    }
    return namespaces, nil
}

The ListNamespaes function takes in only one parameter. The client is the Kubernetes client of type kubernetes.Interface. The function returns two parameters. The first is of type *v1.NamespaceList, a pointer to the NamespaceList and an error data type. If there are no errors, the error will return a nil.

Next, let’s see how we can call this function from the main() part.

    ...
    //ListNamespaces function call returns a list of namespaces in the kubernetes cluster
    namespaces, err := ListNamespaces(clientset)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println(err.Error)
        os.Exit(1)
    }
    for _, namespace := range namespaces.Items {
        fmt.Println(namespace.Name)
    }
    fmt.Printf("Total namespaces: %d\n", len(namespaces.Items))
    ...

The ListNamespaces() function returns a list of Namespaces and an error err variable to see if we have any errors and exit. We can iterate over this list in the for loop and print the name using the namespace.Name. Finally, we are printing the number of Pods returned using the len(namespaces.Items).

Assembling the Pieces

After putting all the pieces together, we have a main.go file containing all the code we discussed previously. Secondly, we have a go.mod file containing the dependencies, in this case, k8s.io/apimachinery and k8s.io/client-go.

Installing the Dependencies and Testing

We are using the go version 1.19. To install the dependencies, we need to run the following command:

$ go mod tidy

We can run the code using the below command:

$ go run ./main.go

Before running the code, ensure you can access the target Kubernetes cluster using kubectl. The kubeconfig file should be in the user’s home .kube folder for the setup to work as expected.

Conclusion

The Kubernetes SDK allows us to extend Kubernetes based on our use case. We can leverage the power of the Kubernetes SDK by in-cluster client communication. This way, the code is executed inside the Kubernetes cluster in a Pod where we can provide a granular level of access using a service account with proper permissions. The level of automation we can create using the Kubernetes SDK is limited only by our imagination.