openshift/console

OpenShift Console

Codename: "Bridge"

quay.io/openshift/origin-console

The console is a more friendly kubectl in the form of a single page webapp. It also integrates with other services like monitoring, chargeback, and OLM. Some things that go on behind the scenes include:

• Proxying the Kubernetes API under /api/kubernetes
• Providing additional non-Kubernetes APIs for interacting with the cluster
• Serving all frontend static assets
• User Authentication

Quickstart

Dependencies:

1. node.js >= 24.22.1 with corepack enabled for yarn berry
2. go >= 1.26
3. oc or kubectl and an OpenShift or Kubernetes cluster
4. jq (used by scripts and tests; see code usage)

Build everything:

This project uses Go modules, so you should clone the project outside of your GOPATH. To build both the frontend and backend, run:

./build.sh

Backend binaries are output to ./bin.

Configure the application

The following instructions assume you have an existing cluster you can connect to. OpenShift 4.x clusters can be installed using the OpenShift Installer. More information about installing OpenShift can be found at https://try.openshift.com/. You can also use CodeReady Containers for local installs, or native Kubernetes clusters.

OpenShift (no authentication)

For local development, you can disable OAuth and run bridge with an OpenShift user's access token. If you've installed OpenShift 4.0, run the following commands to login as the kubeadmin user and start a local console for development. Make sure to replace /path/to/install-dir with the directory you used to install OpenShift.

oc login -u kubeadmin -p $(cat /path/to/install-dir/auth/kubeadmin-password)
source ./contrib/oc-environment.sh
./bin/bridge

The console will be running at localhost:9000.

NOTE: When the OpenShift console runs on localhost while the OAuth server runs on the cluster domain, cross-origin restrictions can cause users signed in as kubeadmin in a local environment to be automatically reauthenticated when they attempt to log out. To work around this issue, clear the ssn cookie from your browser:

1. Press F12 to open your browser's developer tools.
2. In Chrome, go to Application > Cookies. In Firefox, go to Storage > Cookies.
3. Find the OAuth server domain; for example, oauth-openshift.apps.your-cluster.com.
4. Delete the ssn cookie.
5. From the OpenShift console, click Logout.

If you don't have kubeadmin access, you can use any user's API token, although you will be limited to that user's access and might not be able to run the full integration test suite.

OpenShift (with authentication)

If you need to work on the backend code for authentication or you need to test different users, you can set up authentication in your development environment. Registering an OpenShift OAuth client requires administrative privileges for the entire cluster, not just a local project. You must be logged in as a cluster admin such as system:admin or kubeadmin.

To run bridge locally connected to an OpenShift cluster, create an OAuthClient resource with a generated secret and read that secret:

oc process -f examples/console-oauth-client.yaml | oc apply -f -
oc get oauthclient console-oauth-client -o jsonpath='{.secret}' > examples/console-client-secret

Create a long-lived API token Secret for the console ServiceAccount and extract it to the examples folder. This creates the token and ca.crt files, which are necessary for bridge to proxy API server requests:

oc apply -f examples/secret.yaml
oc extract secret/off-cluster-token -n openshift-console --to ./examples --confirm

Finally run the console and visit localhost:9000:

./examples/run-bridge.sh

Enabling Monitoring Locally

In order to enable the monitoring UI and see the "Observe" navigation item while running locally, you'll need to run the OpenShift Monitoring dynamic plugin alongside Bridge. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Clone the monitoring-plugin repo: https://github.com/openshift/monitoring-plugin
2. cd to the monitoring-plugin root dir
3. Run

make install && make start-frontend

4. Run Bridge in another terminal following the steps above, but set the following environment variable before starting Bridge:

export BRIDGE_PLUGINS="monitoring-plugin=http://localhost:9001"

CodeReady Containers

If you want to use CodeReady for local development, first make sure it is set up, and the OpenShift cluster is started.

To login to the cluster's API server, you can use the following command:

oc login -u kubeadmin -p $(cat ~/.crc/machines/crc/kubeadmin-password) https://api.crc.testing:6443

… or, alternatively, use the CRC daemon UI (Copy OC Login Command --> kubeadmin) to get the cluster-specific command.

Finally, prepare the environment, and run the console:

source ./contrib/environment.sh
./bin/bridge

Native Kubernetes

If you have a working kubectl on your path, you can run the application with:

export KUBECONFIG=/path/to/kubeconfig
source ./contrib/environment.sh
./bin/bridge

The script in contrib/environment.sh sets sensible defaults in the environment, and uses kubectl to query your cluster for endpoint and authentication information.

To configure the application to run by hand, (or if environment.sh doesn't work for some reason) you can manually provide a Kubernetes bearer token with the following steps.

First get the secret ID that has a type of kubernetes.io/service-account-token by running:

kubectl get secrets

then get the secret contents:

kubectl describe secrets/<secret-id-obtained-previously>

Use this token value to set the BRIDGE_K8S_AUTH_BEARER_TOKEN environment variable when running Bridge.

Operator

In OpenShift 4.x, the console is installed and managed by the console operator.

Hacking

See CONTRIBUTING for workflow & convention details.

See STYLEGUIDE for file format and coding style guide.

Dev Dependencies

go 1.26+, nodejs/yarn, kubectl

Frontend Development

All frontend code lives in the frontend/ directory. The frontend uses node, yarn, and rspack to compile dependencies into self-contained bundles which are loaded dynamically at run time in the browser. These bundles are not committed to git. Tasks are defined in package.json in the scripts section and are aliased to yarn run <cmd> (in the frontend directory).

Install Dependencies

To install the build tools and dependencies:

cd frontend
yarn install

You must run this command once, and every time the dependencies change. node_modules are not committed to git.

Interactive Development

The following build task will watch the source code for changes and compile automatically. If you would like to disable hot reloading, set the environment variable HOT_RELOAD to false.

yarn run dev

If changes aren't detected, you might need to increase fs.inotify.max_user_watches. See https://webpack.js.org/configuration/watch/#not-enough-watchers. If you need to increase your watchers, it's common to see multiple errors beginning with Error from chokidar.

Note: ensure yarn run dev has finished its initial build before visiting http://localhost:9000, otherwise ./bin/bridge will stop running.

Unit Tests

Run all unit tests:

./test.sh

Run backend tests:

./test-backend.sh

Run frontend tests:

./test-frontend.sh

Debugging Unit Tests

1. cd frontend; yarn run build
2. Add debugger; statements to any unit test
3. yarn debug-test route-pages
4. Chrome browser URL: 'chrome://inspect/#devices', click on the 'inspect' link in Target (v10...) section.
5. Launches chrome-dev tools, click Resume button to continue
6. Will break on any debugger; statements

Integration Tests

Integration tests are implemented in Playwright.

To install Playwright:

cd frontend
yarn playwright install chromium

Launch the Playwright test runner:

cd frontend
oc login ...
yarn run test-playwright-ui

This will launch the Playwright Test Runner UI, where you can run one or all Playwright tests.

Important: when testing with authentication, populate .env in the frontend/e2e directory with BRIDGE_KUBEADMIN_PASSWORD or set the environment variable in your shell.

Tests target WEB_CONSOLE_URL (default http://localhost:9000), which is deliberately separate from BRIDGE_BASE_ADDRESS so you can be oc login'd to a cluster while testing a local bridge. Copy frontend/e2e/.env.example to frontend/e2e/.env to set these persistently.

See TESTING.md for conventions on writing these tests (fixtures, page objects, selectors, cluster access).

Execute Playwright in different packages

Each package is a Playwright project, selected with --project. The projects come from the packages array in frontend/playwright.config.ts: smoke, console, dev-console, helm, knative, olm, topology and webterminal. Packages with developer-persona tests also get a <project>-developer variant, which only exists when BRIDGE_HTPASSWD_USERNAME is set.

cd frontend
yarn test-playwright --project=olm                      # run the OLM project
yarn test-playwright --project=console --project=olm    # run several projects
yarn test-playwright e2e/tests/console/crud             # run tests matching a path
yarn test-playwright --grep "secret"                    # run tests matching a title
yarn test-playwright-admin                              # all admin-persona projects
yarn test-playwright-developer                          # all developer-persona projects

frontend/integration-tests/test-playwright.sh is the CI-oriented wrapper around the same command: it resolves BRIDGE_BASE_ADDRESS via oc, derives WEB_CONSOLE_URL, and copies reports and traces into $ARTIFACT_DIR afterwards. It forwards its arguments to playwright test and takes one flag of its own, -c, which runs contrib/create-user.sh first to create the htpasswd user the developer-persona tests need. Use -- to separate its flags from Playwright's.

console/frontend > ./integration-tests/test-playwright.sh --project=smoke
console/frontend > ./integration-tests/test-playwright.sh -c -- --project=dev-console-developer

How the Integration Tests Run in CI

The end-to-end tests run against pull requests using ci-operator. The tests are defined in this manifest in the openshift/release repo and were generated with ci-operator-prowgen.

CI runs the test-prow-e2e.sh script, which runs frontend/integration-tests/test-playwright.sh.

test-playwright.sh e2e will then run all Playwright tests in the frontend/e2e directory.

For more information on test-playwright.sh usage please see Execute Playwright in different packages

Internationalization

See INTERNATIONALIZATION for information on our internationalization tools and guidelines.

Deploying a Custom Image to an OpenShift Cluster

Once you have made changes locally, these instructions will allow you to push changes to an OpenShift cluster for others to review. This involves building a local image, pushing the image to an image registry, then updating the OpenShift cluster to pull the new image.

Prerequisites

1. Docker v17.05 or higher for multi-stage builds
2. An image registry like quay.io or Docker Hub

Steps

1. Create a repository in the image registry of your choice to hold the image.
2. Build Image docker build -t <your-image-name> <path-to-repository | url>. For example:

docker build -t quay.io/myaccount/console:latest .

3. Push image to image registry docker push <your-image-name>. Make sure docker is logged into your image registry! For example:

docker push quay.io/myaccount/console:latest

4. Put the console operator in unmanaged state:

oc patch consoles.operator.openshift.io cluster --patch '{ "spec": { "managementState": "Unmanaged" } }' --type=merge

5. Update the console Deployment with the new image:

oc set image deploy console console=quay.io/myaccount/console:latest -n openshift-console

6. Wait for the changes to rollout:

oc rollout status -w deploy/console -n openshift-console

You should now be able to see your development changes on the remote OpenShift cluster!

When done, you can put the console operator back in a managed state to remove the custom image:

oc patch consoles.operator.openshift.io cluster --patch '{ "spec": { "managementState": "Managed" } }' --type=merge

Dependency Management

Dependencies should be pinned to an exact semver, sha, or git tag (eg, no ^).

Backend

Whenever making vendor changes:

1. Finish updating dependencies & writing changes
2. Commit everything except vendor/ (eg, server: add x feature)
3. Make a second commit with only vendor/ (eg, vendor: revendor)

Adding new or updating existing backend dependencies:

1. Edit the go.mod file to the desired version (most likely a git hash)
2. Run go mod tidy && go mod vendor
3. Verify update was successful. go.sum will have been updated to reflect the changes to go.mod and the package will have been updated in vendor.

Frontend

Add new frontend dependencies:

yarn add <package@version>

Update existing frontend dependencies:

yarn up <package@version>

To upgrade yarn itself, run yarn set version <version> in frontend directory. This will update the yarn release file in frontend/.yarn/releases and the yarnPath in frontend/.yarnrc.yml, as well as the packageManager field in frontend/package.json.

@patternfly

Note that when upgrading @patternfly packages, we've seen in the past that it can cause the JavaScript heap to run out of memory, or the bundle being too large if multiple versions of the same @patternfly package is pulled in. To increase efficiency, run the following after updating packages:

yarn dedupe --strategy highest

Please note that PatternFly releases do not strictly follow semantic versioning. Therefore, it's important to use the ~ semver range operator to avoid unintended minor version bumps of PatternFly dependencies. Also note that such semver ranges may be used when building Console dynamic plugins for checking version compatibility.

Supported Browsers

We support the latest versions of the following browsers:

• Edge
• Chrome
• Safari
• Firefox

IE 11 and earlier is not supported.

CLI Artifacts Downloads Server

The server provides oc binaries from the quay.io/repository/openshift/origin-cli-artifacts image.

To build the server:

./build-downloads.sh

Running the server :

After building, the server can be run directly with:

./bin/downloads --config-path=cmd/downloads/config/defaultArtifactsConfig.yaml

Alternatively, you can use the provided Dockerfile.downloads to build an image containing the server. Use the following command to build the Docker image:

docker build -f Dockerfile.downloads -t downloadsserver:latest .

Note: If you are running on macOS, you might need to pass the --platform linux/amd64 flag to the Docker build command. The origin-cli-artifacts image is not supported on macOS.

To launch the server using the built image, you can run:

docker run -p 8081:8081 downloadsserver:latest

ContentSecurityViolation Detection

The console application automatically reports CSP violations to telemetry. This detection and reporting logic attempts to parse a dynamic plugin name from the securitypolicyviolation event to include in the data reported to telemetry. When the event does not expose a plugin asset URL and reports browser-extension as its source file, the document URL is matched against active dynamic plugin routes; a plugin name is included only when one plugin has matching routes. This is a route association and does not prove which page React Router selected or which script initiated the violation. If a plugin name is not determined in this way, an empty plugin name is used. Additionally, violation reporting is throttled to prevent spamming the telemetry service with repetitive data. Identical violations will not be reported more than once a day.

Bridge defaults to --csp-mode=report-only, which emits the Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only HTTP header. Use --csp-mode=enforce to emit Content-Security-Policy HTTP header and block resources that violate the policy. Both modes use the same CSP directives. Restart Bridge with --csp-mode=report-only to roll back enforcement. Invalid mode values prevent startup.

In case of local developement of the dynamic plugin, just pass needed CSP directives address to the console server, using the --content-security-policy flag.

Example:

./bin/bridge --content-security-policy script-src='localhost:1234',font-src='localhost:2345 localhost:3456'

List of configurable CSP directives is available in the openshift/api repository.

The list is extended automatically by the console server with following CSP directives:

• "frame-src 'none'"
• "frame-ancestors 'none'"
• "object-src 'none'"

Currently this feature is behind feature gate.

Frontend Packages

• console-dynamic-plugin-sdk [API] [Console Extensions]

• dev-console

• oxlint-plugin-console

• integration-tests

• knative-plugin

• operator-lifecycle-manager

Telemetry

Console uses Segment Analytics for telemetry purposes. To test Console telemetry on local development environment, set up BRIDGE_TELEMETRY environment variable before running the Console Bridge server.

# https://github.com/openshift/console-operator/blob/main/manifests/05-telemetry-config.yaml
API_HOST="console.redhat.com/connections/api/v1"
JS_HOST="console.redhat.com/connections/cdn"
PUBLIC_API_KEY="..." # Use API key from the link above

# The BRIDGE_TELEMETRY variable contains a comma separated list of Console telemetry options
export BRIDGE_TELEMETRY=\
SEGMENT_API_HOST="${API_HOST}",\
SEGMENT_JS_HOST="${JS_HOST}",\
SEGMENT_API_KEY="${PUBLIC_API_KEY}",\
DISABLED="false"

# Run Bridge server, telemetry options should get passed to frontend as SERVER_FLAGS.telemetry
./bin/bridge

# If you no longer need the custom telemetry options, unset the BRIDGE_TELEMETRY variable
unset BRIDGE_TELEMETRY

[Descriptors README] [Descriptors API Reference]