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Escape Hatches

An “escape hatch” is an intentional leak in the abstraction layer. It allows users to “escape the abstraction” and reach out to a lower layer.

Similarly, in CDKs, escape hatches are mechanisms that allow users to tweak the synthesized output when the abstraction they use does not “hold water”.

You may need to use an escape hatch in the following cases:

  1. You are using an imported API object (e.g. KubeDeployment) and there is an issue with the schema or a bug in “import” which results in an invalid manifest or missing fields (as an example see issue #140).
  2. You are using a high-level API (e.g. cdk8s+) which does not expose some functionality which exists in the lower-level resources.

Patching API objects directly

The ApiObject class, which is the base of all objects synthesized into a Kubernetes manifest offers an API for patching the synthesized output at the wire level using JSON Patch (RFC-6902):

import { JsonPatch } from 'cdk8s';
apiObject.addJsonPatch(JsonPatch.replace('/foo', 'bar'));
apiObject.addJsonPatch(JsonPatch.add('/foo/bar/0', { bar: 123 }));

During synthesis, patches are applied in-order after the API object synthesized itself.

All classes generated using the CLI import command extend ApiObject, and therefore include the addJsonPatch() method.

Patching API objects behind higher-level APIs

The second use case for using escape hatches is when you are working against a higher-level construct which, for some reason, does not allow you to achieve what you need.

For example, let’s say you are using the Pod class from cdk8s+ and you wish to set [enableServiceLinks] to true. This feature is currently not supported in the cdk8s+ Pod API, so you’ll want to patch the underlying KubePod and set this value.

To do that, you will need to “peak” into the construct tree and find the underlying API object, so you can apply the patch to it:

import { Pod } from 'cdk8s-plus-29';
import { ApiObject } from 'cdk8s';

const pod = new Pod(...);
const kubePod = ApiObject.of(pod);
kubePod.addJsonPatch(...);

The ApiObject.of() method uses capabilities of the constructs programming model to find the “default child” of a construct (Node.of(c).defaultChild). When a construct is initialized, it can either explicitly assign the value of Node.of(this).defaultChild = xxx or it can use the identity Default for one of its child constructs. This will automatically identify it as the default child.

Tip

The ApiObject.of() method recursively searches down the construct tree through child constructs called Default until it finds a child of type ApiObject. This means, for example, that ApiObject.of(apiObject) returns the same object.

There could be situations where a default child is not recorded by a high-level construct. This still does not mean you are blocked from patching the underlying API objects. You can still use Node.of(x) to traverse the construct tree to obtain the child. For example, you can use Node.of(x).findChild(id) to retrieve any child by its ID.