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Introduction

The Kubernetes JavaScript Client is the official Node.js client for interacting with Kubernetes clusters. It's written in TypeScript and provides a powerful, type-safe way to manage Kubernetes resources from your Node.js applications.

Installation​

Install the client using npm:

npm install @kubernetes/client-node

Quick Start​

The following example shows how to load your default KubeConfig and list all pods in the default namespace.

import * as k8s from '@kubernetes/client-node';

const kc = new k8s.KubeConfig();
kc.loadFromDefault();

const k8sApi = kc.makeApiClient(k8s.CoreV1Api);

async function listPods() {
    try {
        const res = await k8sApi.listNamespacedPod({ namespace: 'default' });
        console.log(
            'Pods:',
            res.items.map((pod) => pod.metadata?.name),
        );
    } catch (err) {
        console.error('Error:', err);
    }
}

listPods();

KubeConfig Methods​

The KubeConfig class provides several ways to load your configuration:

  • loadFromDefault(): Loads from the default location (~/.kube/config or service account)
  • loadFromFile(path): Loads from a specific file
  • loadFromString(content): Loads from a YAML string
  • loadFromOptions(options): Loads from a programmatic object
  • loadFromCluster(): Specifically for running inside a cluster (Service Account)

Compatibility​

Starting with release 0.13.0, the minor version of this library tracks the minor Kubernetes API version it was generated from.

client versionolder versions1.281.291.301.311.321.331.34
0.19.x-✓xxxxxx
0.20.x-+✓xxxxx
0.21.x-++✓xxxx
0.22.x-+++✓xxx
1.0.x-++++✓xx
1.1.x-++++✓xx
1.2.x-+++++✓x
1.3.x-+++++✓x
1.4.x-++++++✓

Key:

  • ✓ Exactly the same features / API objects.
  • + Client has more features than the cluster, common features work.
  • - Cluster has features client can't use yet.
  • x No guarantee of support (outside the n-2 version support window).