Usually when a pod goes down for some reasons, the port-forward session will fail right after when it receives a new traffic, regardless if we restart the pod or not. You are then forced to restart the port-forward session manually.
This is a simple kubectl plugin to keep the port-forward "alive" in that scenerio. Under the hood it simply use Kubernetes API to check the pods status and restart the port-forward session automatically if necessary. It also supports port-forward multiple ports at once.
Disclaimer: This is just a toy project for me to play around with Go and Kubernetes API. In reality, you can just set up an Ingress instead.
- Automatically restart the port-forward session when the pods are stopped for any reason.
- Can use a yaml file as configuration to avoid typing all the params every time.
- Can be used to port-forward multiple ports at once when using yaml file.
At the root directory of the project:
go build ./cmd/kubectl-sticky_port_forward.go
It will output a file called kubectl-sticky_port_forward in the same directory.
According to kubernetes doc, you simply need to put the built binary in any directory that is in your PATH. Then you can call kubectl sticky-port-forward to use the plugin.
You can totally rename the binary to something else too. For example, renaming it to kubectl-spf so you can call it as kubectl spf which is much more convenience.
You can start by using kubectl sticky-port-forward for the general help.
Example for inline usage:
# port-forward based on label
kubectl sticky-port-forward --labels app=appname 80:8080
# port-forward based on label with multiple ports
kubectl sticky-port-forward --labels app=appname 80:8080 443:443
# port-forward based on label with specific namespace
kubectl sticky-port-forward --labels app=appname -n othernamespace 80:8080
# port-forward based on pod name with regex matching
kubectl sticky-port-forward --pod podname.* 80:8080
Example with yaml config file:
# use a yaml file to start port-forward
kubectl sticky-port-forward -f ./config.yml
# create a new yaml config file
kubectl sticky-port-forward -l app=subscription-management-service-db 8081:8080 -o ./config.yml
# append to an existing yaml config file
kubectl sticky-port-forward -l app=subscription-management-service-db 8081:8080 -a ./config.yml