Patch Traits

Patch is a very common pattern of trait definitions, i.e. the app operators can amend/patch attributes to the component instance (normally the workload) to enable certain operational features such as sidecar or node affinity rules (and this should be done before the resources applied to target cluster).

This pattern is extremely useful when the component definition is provided by third-party component provider (e.g. software distributor) so app operators do not have privilege to change its template.

Below is an example for node-affinity trait:

The patch trait above assumes the target component instance have spec.template.spec.affinity field. Hence, we need to use appliesToWorkloads to enforce the trait only applies to those workload types have this field.

Another important field is podDisruptive, this patch trait will patch to the pod template field, so changes on any field of this trait will cause the pod to restart, We should add podDisruptive and make it to be true to tell users that applying this trait will cause the pod to restart.

Now the users could declare they want to add node affinity rules to the component instance as below:

apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1alpha2
kind: Application
metadata:
  name: testapp
spec:
  components:
    - name: express-server
      type: webservice
      properties:
        image: oamdev/testapp:v1
      traits:
        - type: "node-affinity"
          properties:
            affinity:
              server-owner: ["owner1","owner2"]
              resource-pool: ["pool1","pool2","pool3"]
            tolerations:
              resource-pool: "broken-pool1"
              server-owner: "old-owner"

By default, patch trait in KubeVela leverages the CUE merge operation. It has following known constraints though:

• Can not handle conflicts.
  • For example, if a component instance already been set with value replicas=5, then any patch trait to patch replicas field will fail, a.k.a you should not expose replicas field in its component definition schematic.
• Array list in the patch will be merged following the order of index. It can not handle the duplication of the array list members. This could be fixed by another feature below.

Strategy Patch

Strategy Patch is effective by adding annotation, and supports the following two ways

1. With +patchKey=<key_name> annotation

• if a duplicated key is found, the patch data will be merge with the existing values;
• if no duplication found, the patch will append into the array list.

The example of strategy patch trait with ‘patchKey’ will like below:

apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1beta1
kind: TraitDefinition
metadata:
  annotations:
    definition.oam.dev/description: "add sidecar to the app"
  name: sidecar
spec:
  appliesToWorkloads:
    - deployments.apps
  podDisruptive: true
  schematic:
    cue:
      template: |
        patch: {
            // +patchKey=name
            spec: template: spec: containers: [parameter]
        }
        parameter: {
            name:  string
            image: string
            command?: [...string]
        }

In above example we defined patchKey is name which is the parameter key of container name. In this case, if the workload don’t have the container with same name, it will be a sidecar container append into the spec.template.spec.containers array list. If the workload already has a container with the same name of this sidecar trait, then merge operation will happen instead of append (which leads to duplicated containers).

If patch and outputs both exist in one trait definition, the patch operation will be handled first and then render the outputs.

apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1beta1
kind: TraitDefinition
metadata:
  annotations:
    definition.oam.dev/description: "expose the app"
  name: expose
spec:
  appliesToWorkloads:
    - deployments.apps
  podDisruptive: true
  schematic:
    cue:
      template: |
        patch: {spec: template: metadata: labels: app: context.name}
        outputs: service: {
            apiVersion: "v1"
            kind:       "Service"
            metadata: name: context.name
            spec: {
                selector: app: context.name
                ports: [
                    for k, v in parameter.http {
                        port:       v
                        targetPort: v
                    },
                ]
            }
        }
        parameter: {
            http: [string]: int
        }

So the above trait which attaches a Service to given component instance will patch an corresponding label to the workload first and then render the Service resource based on template in outputs.

2. With +patchStrategy=retainkeys annotation

Similar to strategy in K8s strategic merge patch

In some scenarios that the entire object needs to be replaced, retainkeys strategy is the best choice. the example as follows:

Assume the Deployment is the base resource

Now want to replace rollingUpdate strategy with a new strategy, you can write the patch trait like below

apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1alpha2
kind: TraitDefinition
metadata:
  name: recreate
spec:
  appliesToWorkloads:
    - deployments.apps
  extension:
    template: |-
      patch: {
         spec: {
              // +patchStrategy=retainKeys
              strategy: type: "Recreate"
           }
      }

Then the base resource becomes as follows

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: retainkeys-demo
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  strategy:
    type: Recreate
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: retainkeys-demo-ctr
        image: nginx

Patch trait is in general pretty useful to separate operational concerns from the component definition, here are some more examples.

apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1alpha2
kind: TraitDefinition
metadata:
  annotations:
    definition.oam.dev/description: "Add virtual group labels"
  name: virtualgroup
spec:
  appliesToWorkloads:
    - deployments.apps
  podDisruptive: true
  schematic:
    cue:
      template: |
        patch: {
            spec: template: {
                metadata: labels: {
                    if parameter.scope == "namespace" {
                        "app.namespace.virtual.group": parameter.group
                    }
                    if parameter.scope == "cluster" {
                        "app.cluster.virtual.group": parameter.group
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        parameter: {
            group: *"default" | string
            scope:  *"namespace" | string
        }

Then it could be used like:

Add Annotations

Similar to common labels, you could also patch the component instance with annotations. The annotation value should be a JSON string.

apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1beta1
kind: TraitDefinition
metadata:
  annotations:
    definition.oam.dev/description: "Specify auto scale by annotation"
  name: kautoscale
spec:
  appliesToWorkloads:
    - deployments.apps
  podDisruptive: false
  schematic:
    cue:
      template: |
        import "encoding/json"
        patch: {
            metadata: annotations: {
                "my.custom.autoscale.annotation": json.Marshal({
                    "minReplicas": parameter.min
                    "maxReplicas": parameter.max
                })
            }
        }
        parameter: {
            min: *1 | int
            max: *3 | int
        }

Inject system environments into Pod is also very common use case.

apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1beta1
kind: TraitDefinition
metadata:
  annotations:
  name: env
spec:
  appliesToWorkloads:
    - deployments.apps
  podDisruptive: true
  schematic:
    cue:
      template: |
        patch: {
            spec: template: spec: {
                // +patchKey=name
                containers: [{
                    name: context.name
                    // +patchKey=name
                    env: [
                        for k, v in parameter.env {
                            name:  k
                            value: v
                        },
                    ]
                }]
            }
        }
        parameter: {
            env: [string]: string
        }

Inject ServiceAccount Based on External Auth Service

In this example, the service account was dynamically requested from an authentication service and patched into the service.

This example put UID token in HTTP header but you can also use request body if you prefer.

apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1beta1
kind: TraitDefinition
metadata:
  annotations:
    definition.oam.dev/description: "dynamically specify service account"
  name: service-account
spec:
  appliesToWorkloads:
    - deployments.apps
  podDisruptive: true
  schematic:
    cue:
      template: |
        processing: {
            output: {
                credentials?: string
            }
            http: {
                method: *"GET" | string
                url:    parameter.serviceURL
                request: {
                    header: {
                        "authorization.token": parameter.uidtoken
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        patch: {
            spec: template: spec: serviceAccountName: processing.output.credentials
        }
        parameter: {
            uidtoken:   string
            serviceURL: string
        }

The processing.http section is an advanced feature that allow trait definition to send a HTTP request during rendering the resource. Please refer to Execute HTTP Request in Trait Definition section for more details.

is useful to pre-define operations in an image and run it before app container.

Below is an example:

The usage could be:

apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1beta1
kind: Application
metadata:
  name: testapp
spec:
  components:
    - name: express-server
      type: webservice
      properties:
        image: oamdev/testapp:v1
      traits:
        - type: "init-container"
          properties:
            name:  "install-container"
            image: "busybox"
            command:
            - wget
            - "-O"
            - "/work-dir/index.html"
            - http://info.cern.ch
            mountName: "workdir"
            appMountPath:  "/usr/share/nginx/html"