Using Gateway API with Contour

This tutorial walks through an example of using Gateway API with Contour. See the [Contour reference documentation][5] for more information on Contour's Gateway API support.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites must be met before following this guide:

• A working Kubernetes cluster. Refer to the compatibility matrix for cluster version requirements.
• The kubectl command-line tool, installed and configured to access your cluster.

Deploy Contour with Gateway API enabled

First, deploy Contour with Gateway API enabled. This can be done using either [static or dynamic provisioning][6].

Option #1: Statically provisioned

Create Gateway API CRDs:

$ kubectl apply -f {{< param github_raw_url>}}/{{< param branch >}}/examples/gateway/00-crds.yaml

Create a GatewayClass:

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
kind: GatewayClass
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
metadata:
  name: contour
spec:
  controllerName: projectcontour.io/gateway-controller
EOF

Create a Gateway in the projectcontour namespace:

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
kind: Namespace
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: projectcontour
---
kind: Gateway
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
metadata:
  name: contour
  namespace: projectcontour
spec:
  gatewayClassName: contour
  listeners:
    - name: http
      protocol: HTTP
      port: 80
      allowedRoutes:
        namespaces:
          from: All
EOF

Deploy Contour:

$ kubectl apply -f {{< param base_url >}}/quickstart/contour.yaml

This command creates:

• Namespace projectcontour to run Contour
• Contour CRDs
• Contour RBAC resources
• Contour Deployment / Service
• Envoy DaemonSet / Service
• Contour ConfigMap

Update the Contour configmap to enable Gateway API processing by specifying a gateway controller name, and restart Contour to pick up the config change:

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
kind: ConfigMap
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: contour
  namespace: projectcontour
data:
  contour.yaml: |
    gateway:
      controllerName: projectcontour.io/gateway-controller
EOF

kubectl -n projectcontour rollout restart deployment/contour

See the next section (Testing the Gateway API) for how to deploy an application and route traffic to it using Gateway API!

Option #2: Dynamically provisioned

Deploy the Gateway provisioner:

$ kubectl apply -f {{< param base_url >}}/quickstart/contour-gateway-provisioner.yaml

This command creates:

• Namespace projectcontour to run the Gateway provisioner
• Contour CRDs
• Gateway API CRDs
• Gateway provisioner RBAC resources
• Gateway provisioner Deployment

Create a GatewayClass:

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
kind: GatewayClass
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
metadata:
  name: contour
spec:
  controllerName: projectcontour.io/gateway-controller
EOF

Create a Gateway:

kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
kind: Gateway
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
metadata:
  name: contour
  namespace: projectcontour
spec:
  gatewayClassName: contour
  listeners:
    - name: http
      protocol: HTTP
      port: 80
      allowedRoutes:
        namespaces:
          from: All
EOF

The above creates:

• A GatewayClass named contour controlled by the Gateway provisioner (via the projectcontour.io/gateway-controller string)
• A Gateway resource named contour in the projectcontour namespace, using the contour GatewayClass
• Contour and Envoy resources in the projectcontour namespace to implement the Gateway, i.e. a Contour deployment, an Envoy daemonset, an Envoy service, etc.

See the next section (Testing the Gateway API) for how to deploy an application and route traffic to it using Gateway API!

Configure an HTTPRoute

Deploy the test application:

$ kubectl apply -f {{< param github_raw_url>}}/{{< param branch >}}/examples/example-workload/gatewayapi/kuard/kuard.yaml

This command creates:

• A Deployment named kuard in the default namespace to run kuard as the test application.
• A Service named kuard in the default namespace to expose the kuard application on TCP port 80.
• An HTTPRoute named kuard in the default namespace, attached to the contour Gateway, to route requests for local.projectcontour.io to the kuard service.

Verify the kuard resources are available:

$ kubectl get po,svc,httproute -l app=kuard
NAME                         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/kuard-798585497b-78x6x   1/1     Running   0          21s
pod/kuard-798585497b-7gktg   1/1     Running   0          21s
pod/kuard-798585497b-zw42m   1/1     Running   0          21s

NAME            TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)   AGE
service/kuard   ClusterIP   172.30.168.168   <none>        80/TCP    21s

NAME                                        HOSTNAMES
httproute.gateway.networking.k8s.io/kuard   ["local.projectcontour.io"]

Test Routing

Note, for simplicity and compatibility across all platforms we'll use kubectl port-forward to get traffic to Envoy, but in a production environment you would typically use the Envoy service's address.

Port-forward from your local machine to the Envoy service:

# If using static provisioning
$ kubectl -n projectcontour port-forward service/envoy 8888:80

# If using dynamic provisioning
$ kubectl -n projectcontour port-forward service/envoy-contour 8888:80

In another terminal, make a request to the application via the forwarded port (note, local.projectcontour.io is a public DNS record resolving to 127.0.0.1 to make use of the forwarded port):

$ curl -i http://local.projectcontour.io:8888

You should receive a 200 response code along with the HTML body of the main kuard page.

You can also open http://local.projectcontour.io:8888/ in a browser.

Further reading

This guide only scratches the surface of the Gateway API's capabilities. See the Gateway API website for more information.

[5]: /docs/{{< param version >}}/config/gateway-api [6]: /docs/{{< param version >}}/config/gateway-api#enabling-gateway-api-in-contour