How to Build a Custom Kubernetes Ingress Controller in Go

Caleb Doxsey

Recently I switched from GKE to Digital Ocean as my Managed Kubernetes provider. As part of the switch I wanted to also start using a Kubernetes Ingress Controller to map incoming HTTP requests to specific services. After some frustration attempting to get the NGINX Ingress Controller working, I ended up rolling my own in an afternoon. This blog post will explain how I did that.

Even if you have no need to make your own ingress controller, the steps described below are generally useful both for Kubernetes development as well as building HTTP proxies in Go.

Overview

A description of my basic Kubernetes setup can be found in a prior blog post: Kubernetes: The Surprisingly Affordable Platform for Personal Projects. I maintain several web applications in a Kubernetes cluster. Each of those web applications is made up of a Deployment and a corresponding Service:

apiVersion : apps/v1 kind : Deployment metadata : name : doxsey-www labels : app : doxsey-www spec : replicas : 1 selector : matchLabels : app : doxsey-www template : metadata : labels : app : doxsey-www spec : containers : - name : doxsey-www image : quay.io/calebdoxsey/www:v1.4.0 ports : - containerPort : 9002 --- kind : Service apiVersion : v1 metadata : namespace : default name : doxsey-www spec : selector : app : doxsey-www ports : - protocol : TCP port : 9002 targetPort : 9002

With this service + deployment in place the web application can be reached by going to doxsey-www.default.svc.cluster from within the Kubernetes cluster. But how do clients on the internet access the service?

Previously the way I solved this was by running NGINX as a DaemonSet on each node attached to the host network:

spec : hostNetwork : true containers : - image : nginx:1.15.3-alpine name : nginx ports : - name : http containerPort : 80 hostPort : 80

By setting hostNetwork: true the container will bind port 80 of the node itself, not just the container, and by so doing we can reach NGINX by hitting port 80 of our public IP address. I then open ports 80 and 443 in the firewall and use a custom application to synchronize the node public IP addresses as A records in my DNS provider.

Although this approach works I ran into a few problems:

It requires creating an NGINX configuration file, which can be a bit arcane and surprisingly difficult to get right. If I ever add new deployments or domain names, that configuration file has to manually modified to account for this. TLS certs, though dynamically created with letsencrypt, are also manually configured in the NGINX configuration. NGINX's default behavior is to crash if a DNS lookup on a backend fails when first starting — which can easily happen if all the replicas in a deployment are unavailable. Although this bizarre behavior can be fixed in the enterprise version of NGINX, I never did find a good solution for how to fix it in the open source version. Because I relied on ephemeral nodes which disappeared every 24 hours, the DNS lookup problem sometimes resulted in no NGINX daemons being available.

So this time around I decided to go a different route: using Ingress objects.

Ingress Objects

Kubernetes has support for mapping external domains to internal services via Ingress objects. The Ingress object I'm using looks like this:

apiVersion : extensions/v1beta1 kind : Ingress metadata : name : doxsey-www spec : tls : - hosts : - "*.doxsey.net" secretName : doxsey-net-tls rules : - host : www.doxsey.net http : paths : - path : / backend : serviceName : doxsey-www servicePort : 9002

This manifest declares how incoming HTTP traffic should be routed to backend services:

Any HTTP request to the www.doxsey.net domain, for any path will be routed to the doxsey-www service.

domain, for any path will be routed to the service. If this is an HTTPS request, and the domain matches *.doxsey.net , the doxsey-net-tls certificate will be used for the request.

This configuration is significantly simpler than the manual configuration I had to do with NGINX and it also has native support for TLS certificates as they are stored in Kubernetes (as Kubernetes Secrets). Furthermore adjusting the manifest for a Service or Ingress will automatically adjust the routing rules accordingly.

Ingress Controllers

In addition to the Ingress object, we have to install an Ingress Controller. This Controller is responsible for reading the ingress manifest rules and actually implementing the desired proxy behavior. In other words, an Ingress manifest is merely a declarative intent.

The default ingress controller is the NGINX Ingress Controller, though there are many others. Although it was a fun exercise to implement my own, you should probably use one of these. There can be a lot of subtlety in handling all the edge cases, particularly when dealing with lots of services or rules, and those edge cases and bugs have probably been fixed in more widely used controllers.

Nevertheless building a custom ingress controller is surprisingly straightforward.

A Custom Ingress Controller

The code for this application is available here.

To build a custom ingress controller in Go we need to create an application which will do the following:

Query the Kubernetes API for Services, Ingresses and Secrets and listen for changes. Load the TLS certificates so that they can be used to terminate HTTP requests. Construct a routing table to be used by the HTTP server based on the loaded Kubernetes data. This routing table should be efficient since all incoming HTTP traffic will go through it. Listen on :80 and :443 for incoming HTTP requests. A backend will be looked up according to the routing table and an httputil.ReverseProxy will be used to proxy the request and response. For :443 the appropriate TLS cert will be used for the secure connection.

Let's take each of these in turn.

Querying Kubernetes

A Kubernetes client can be created by getting a rest config and calling NewForConfig :

config , err := rest . InClusterConfig () if err != nil { log . Fatal (). Err ( err ). Msg ( "failed to get kubernetes configuration" ) } client , err := kubernetes . NewForConfig ( config ) if err != nil { log . Fatal (). Err ( err ). Msg ( "failed to create kubernetes client" ) }

From there we create a Watcher and Payload . The Watcher is responsible for querying Kubernetes and creating Payload s. The Payload consists of all the Kubernetes data needed to fulfill HTTP requests:

// A Payload is a collection of Kubernetes data loaded by the watcher. type Payload struct { Ingresses [] IngressPayload TLSCertificates map [ string ] * tls . Certificate } // An IngressPayload is an ingress + its service ports. type IngressPayload struct { Ingress * extensionsv1beta1 . Ingress ServicePorts map [ string ] map [ string ] int }

Ingresses can reference backend service ports by name in addition to port, so we populate that data by retrieving the corresponding service definition.

The Watcher has a single Run(ctx context.Context) error method and contains two fields:

// A Watcher watches for ingresses in the kubernetes cluster type Watcher struct { client kubernetes . Interface onChange func ( * Payload ) }

With this approach the onChange function will be called anytime we detect that something has changed. There are a couple other ways we could build this API:

We could use a Channel for updates: type Watcher struct { Updates chan * Payload } We could use an iterator like bufio.Scanner func ( w * Watcher ) OnUpdate () bool func ( w * Watcher ) Payload () * Payload func ( w * Watcher ) Err () error Used like: for watcher . OnUpdate () { // ... }

Because of how we use the Watcher it doesn't make a big difference which approach is taken. Notice that the Watcher doesn't know anything about HTTP routing. Using the separation of concerns design principle helps to make the code easier to understand.

To implement Run we use the k8s.io/client-go/informers package. This package provides a type-safe, efficient mechanism for retrieving, listing and watching Kubernetes objects. We create a SharedInformerFactory along with Lister s for each object we're interested in:

func ( w * Watcher ) Run ( ctx context . Context ) error { factory := informers . NewSharedInformerFactory ( w . client , time . Minute ) secretLister := factory . Core (). V1 (). Secrets (). Lister () serviceLister := factory . Core (). V1 (). Services (). Lister () ingressLister := factory . Extensions (). V1beta1 (). Ingresses (). Lister ()

We then define a local onChange function which will be called for anytime a change is detected. Rather than utilize special rules for each type of change, it's easier to just rebuild everything from scratch every time. We should only look into more specialized logic if we discover a performance bottleneck. This is especially true because our Watcher runs in a different goroutine from our HTTP handler. We can essentially build the payload in the background without affecting any ongoing requests, so if it takes a few seconds, it's not a big deal.

We start by listing the ingresses:

ingresses , err := ingressLister . List ( labels . Everything ()) if err != nil { log . Error (). Err ( err ). Msg ( "failed to list ingresses" ) return }

Then for each ingress, if there's one or more TLS rules, we load those from the secrets:

for _ , rec := range ingress . Spec . TLS { if rec . SecretName != "" { secret , err := secretLister . Secrets ( ingress . Namespace ). Get ( rec . SecretName ) if err != nil { log . Error (). Err ( err ). Str ( "namespace" , ingress . Namespace ). Str ( "name" , rec . SecretName ). Msg ( "unknown secret" ) continue } cert , err := tls . X509KeyPair ( secret . Data [ "tls.crt" ], secret . Data [ "tls.key" ]) if err != nil { log . Error (). Err ( err ). Str ( "namespace" , ingress . Namespace ). Str ( "name" , rec . SecretName ). Msg ( "invalid tls certificate" ) continue } payload . TLSCertificates [ rec . SecretName ] = & cert } }

Go has excellent support for cryptography built-in, which makes this code very simple. For the actual HTTP rules I made an addBackend helper function:

addBackend := func ( ingressPayload * IngressPayload , backend extensionsv1beta1 . IngressBackend ) { svc , err := serviceLister . Services ( ingressPayload . Ingress . Namespace ). Get ( backend . ServiceName ) if err != nil { log . Error (). Err ( err ). Str ( "namespace" , ingressPayload . Ingress . Namespace ). Str ( "name" , backend . ServiceName ). Msg ( "unknown service" ) } else { m := make ( map [ string ] int ) for _ , port := range svc . Spec . Ports { m [ port . Name ] = int ( port . Port ) } ingressPayload . ServicePorts [ svc . Name ] = m } }

This gets called for each HTTP rule, as well as the optional default rule:

if ingress . Spec . Backend != nil { addBackend ( & ingressPayload , * ingress . Spec . Backend ) } for _ , rule := range ingress . Spec . Rules { if rule . HTTP != nil { continue } for _ , path := range rule . HTTP . Paths { addBackend ( & ingressPayload , path . Backend ) } }

And then we call the onChange callback:

w . onChange ( payload )

The local onChange function is invoked any time something changes, so the final step is to start our informers:

var wg sync . WaitGroup wg . Add ( 1 ) go func () { informer := factory . Core (). V1 (). Secrets (). Informer () informer . AddEventHandler ( handler ) informer . Run ( ctx . Done ()) wg . Done () }() wg . Add ( 1 ) go func () { informer := factory . Extensions (). V1beta1 (). Ingresses (). Informer () informer . AddEventHandler ( handler ) informer . Run ( ctx . Done ()) wg . Done () }() wg . Add ( 1 ) go func () { informer := factory . Core (). V1 (). Services (). Informer () informer . AddEventHandler ( handler ) informer . Run ( ctx . Done ()) wg . Done () }() wg . Wait ()

The same handler is used for each informer:

debounced := debounce . New ( time . Second ) handler := cache . ResourceEventHandlerFuncs { AddFunc : func ( obj interface {}) { debounced ( onChange ) }, UpdateFunc : func ( oldObj , newObj interface {}) { debounced ( onChange ) }, DeleteFunc : func ( obj interface {}) { debounced ( onChange ) }, }

Debouncing is a way of avoiding duplicate events. We set a small delay, and if an additional event occurs before we hit the delay, we restart the timer. Using a debouncer makes it likely that the first onChange event will include all of the ingresses, services and secrets, rather than receiving a partial view of the current state.

And that's basically it for the watcher. You can see the source code here.

Routing Table

Our goal with the routing table is to make it efficient to query by pre-computing most of the lookup information. There's usually a trade-off here between simple solutions which don't have the best performance characterics and hyper-specialized data structures, which often have subtle bugs and are difficult to understand and maintain.

One of the easiest ways of implementing a query interface which is both efficient and easy to understand is to use maps. Maps give us O(1) lookup and its quite difficult to do much better (though some sort of trie might be worthwhile for path prefix / regexp matching). I used a hybrid approach where an initial lookup is done with a map and if multiple entries are found after than, a slice is used (which is O(n) , but n is typically 1)

A routing table consists of two maps:

type RoutingTable struct { certificatesByHost map [ string ] map [ string ] * tls . Certificate backendsByHost map [ string ][] routingTableBackend } // NewRoutingTable creates a new RoutingTable. func NewRoutingTable ( payload * watcher . Payload ) * RoutingTable { rt := & RoutingTable { certificatesByHost : make ( map [ string ] map [ string ] * tls . Certificate ), backendsByHost : make ( map [ string ][] routingTableBackend ), } rt . init ( payload ) return rt }

These correspond to two methods:

// GetCertificate gets a certificate. func ( rt * RoutingTable ) GetCertificate ( sni string ) ( * tls . Certificate , error ) { hostCerts , ok := rt . certificatesByHost [ sni ] if ok { for h , cert := range hostCerts { if rt . matches ( sni , h ) { return cert , nil } } } return nil , errors . New ( "certificate not found" ) } // GetBackend gets the backend for the given host and path. func ( rt * RoutingTable ) GetBackend ( host , path string ) ( * url . URL , error ) { // strip the port if idx := strings . IndexByte ( host , ':' ); idx > 0 { host = host [: idx ] } backends := rt . backendsByHost [ host ] for _ , backend := range backends { if backend . matches ( path ) { return backend . url , nil } } return nil , errors . New ( "backend not found" ) }

GetCertificate is used to get the TLS certificate used for secure connections. GetBackend is used by the HTTP handler to proxy the request to the backend. For the TLS certificate we have a matches method to handle wildcard certs:

func ( rt * RoutingTable ) matches ( sni string , certHost string ) bool { for strings . HasPrefix ( certHost , "*." ) { if idx := strings . IndexByte ( sni , '.' ); idx >= 0 { sni = sni [ idx + 1 :] } else { return false } certHost = certHost [ 2 :] } return sni == certHost }

For the backend the matches method is actually a regular expression (because the definition of an Ingress path is a regular expression):

type routingTableBackend struct { pathRE * regexp . Regexp url * url . URL } func ( rtb routingTableBackend ) matches ( path string ) bool { if rtb . pathRE == nil { return true } return rtb . pathRE . MatchString ( path ) }

You can see how these maps are constructed here.

HTTP Server

For the HTTP Server I decided to use an API configured via functional options. There's a private config struct:

type config struct { host string port int tlsPort int }

An Option type:

// An Option modifies the config. type Option func ( * config )

And functions to set the options. Like WithHost :

// WithHost sets the host to bind in the config. func WithHost ( host string ) Option { return func ( cfg * config ) { cfg . host = host } }

Our server struct and constructor look like this:

// A Server serves HTTP pages. type Server struct { cfg * config routingTable atomic . Value ready * Event } // New creates a new Server. func New ( options ... Option ) * Server { cfg := defaultConfig () for _ , o := range options { o ( cfg ) } s := & Server { cfg : cfg , ready : NewEvent (), } s . routingTable . Store ( NewRoutingTable ( nil )) return s }

By using sane defaults this type of API makes most client usage very easy (most of the time you just say New() ) while still providing flexibility to change options when needed. This approach to APIs has become quite common in Go. For a widely used example check out gRPC.

In addition to the config, our server also has a pointer to the routing table and a ready Event we use to signal the first time the payload is set. More on that in a minute, but first notice we use an atomic.Value to store the routing table. Why do that?

Go programs are not thread-safe. If our routing table is modified while the HTTP handler is attempting to read it, we may end up with corrupt state or our program crashing. Because of this we need to prevent the simultaneous reading and writing of a shared data structure. There are different ways to achieve this:

The way I opted to go was to use an atomic.Value . This type provides a Load and Store method which allows you to atomically read/write the value. Since we rebuild the routing table on every change we can safely swap the old and new routing tables in a single operation. This is quite similar to the ReadMostly example from the documentation: The following example shows how to maintain a scalable frequently read, but infrequently updated data structure using copy-on-write idiom. One downside to this approach is that the type of the value stored has to be asserted at runtime: s . routingTable . Load ().( * RoutingTable ). GetBackend ( r . Host , r . URL . Path ) We could use a Mutex or RWMutex instead to control access to the critical region: // read s . mu . RLock () backendURL , err := s . routingTable . GetBackend ( r . Host , r . URL . Path ) s . mu . RUnlock () // write rt := NewRoutingTable ( payload ) s . mu . Lock () s . routingTable = rt s . mu . Unlock () This approach is very similar to the atomic.Value , but RWMutex s don't scale as well as the atomic.Value . With a large number of goroutines / CPU cores you may have issues with thread contention. We could make the routing table itself thread safe. Instead of a map we could use sync.Map and add methods to dynamically update the routing table instead of rebuilding it each time. In general I would avoid this approach. It makes the code harder to understand and maintain, and often adds unnecessary overhead if you don't actually end up having multiple goroutines accessing the data structure. Instead do your synchronization at the next level up (basically wherever you end up starting goroutines). Global, shared maps are generally a code-smell in Go programs and, for that matter, in any programming where you want to utilize a large number of CPU cores.

The actual Server ServeHTTP method looks like this:

// ServeHTTP serves an HTTP request. func ( s * Server ) ServeHTTP ( w http . ResponseWriter , r * http . Request ) { backendURL , err := s . routingTable . Load ().( * RoutingTable ). GetBackend ( r . Host , r . URL . Path ) if err != nil { http . Error ( w , "upstream server not found" , http . StatusNotFound ) return } log . Info (). Str ( "host" , r . Host ). Str ( "path" , r . URL . Path ). Str ( "backend" , backendURL . String ()). Msg ( "proxying request" ) p := httputil . NewSingleHostReverseProxy ( backendURL ) p . ErrorLog = stdlog . New ( log . Logger , "" , 0 ) p . ServeHTTP ( w , r ) }

The httputil package has a Reverse Proxy implementation that we can leverage for HTTP server. It takes a URL, forwards the request to that URL, and sends the response back to the client.

The server code can be found here

Main

Stitching all the components together, our main function looks like this:

func main () { flag . StringVar ( & host , "host" , "0.0.0.0" , "the host to bind" ) flag . IntVar ( & port , "port" , 80 , "the insecure http port" ) flag . IntVar ( & tlsPort , "tls-port" , 443 , "the secure https port" ) flag . Parse () client , err := kubernetes . NewForConfig ( getKubernetesConfig ()) if err != nil { log . Fatal (). Err ( err ). Msg ( "failed to create kubernetes client" ) } s := server . New ( server . WithHost ( host ), server . WithPort ( port ), server . WithTLSPort ( tlsPort )) w := watcher . New ( client , func ( payload * watcher . Payload ) { s . Update ( payload ) }) var eg errgroup . Group eg . Go ( func () error { return s . Run ( context . TODO ()) }) eg . Go ( func () error { return w . Run ( context . TODO ()) }) if err := eg . Wait (); err != nil { log . Fatal (). Err ( err ). Send () } }

Kubernetes Configuration

With the server code in place we can set it up in Kubernetes as a DaemonController running on each node:

apiVersion : extensions/v1beta1 kind : DaemonSet metadata : name : kubernetes-simple-ingress-controller namespace : default labels : app : ingress-controller spec : selector : matchLabels : app : ingress-controller template : metadata : labels : app : ingress-controller spec : hostNetwork : true dnsPolicy : ClusterFirstWithHostNet serviceAccountName : kubernetes-simple-ingress-controller containers : - name : kubernetes-simple-ingress-controller image : quay.io/calebdoxsey/kubernetes-simple-ingress-controller:v0.1.0 ports : - name : http containerPort : 80 - name : https containerPort : 443

And that's it. The aforementioned kubernetes-cloudflare-sync syncs the node public IPs with cloudflare, so this custom HTTP server will receive any requests that end up on port 80 or 443 of the node itself and they will be proxied to the backend services running in Kubernetes.

Conclusion

So that's how I built a Kubernetes Ingress Controller from scratch. I'm sure I missed something along the way... but I'm actually using this application to serve this blog, so it at least kind of works.