Validating policies

The Kubewarden policy server receives:

  • Kubernetes AdmissionReview objects from the Kubernetes API server. It then forwards the value of its request attribute, of type AdmissionRequest, to the policy to be evaluated.

or:

  • A JSON request attribute containing the free-form request document, in case of a raw policy. Check the Raw policies section for more details.

The policy evaluates the request and states whether it should be accepted or not. When the request is rejected, the policy might provide the explanation message and an error code to be shown to the end user.

By convention, of the policy-server project, the guest has to expose a function named validate, through the waPC guest SDK, so that the policy-server (waPC host) can invoke it.

The validate function receives a ValidationRequest JSON object and returns a ValidationResponse JSON object.

The ValidationRequest object

The ValidationRequest is a JSON object that is received by the validate function. It looks like:

{
  "request": <AdmissionReview.request data> | <RawReviewRequest.request data>,
  "settings": {
    # your policy configuration
  }
}

The settings key points to a free-form JSON document holds the policy specific settings. The previous chapter focused on policies and settings.

An example

Given the following Kubernetes AdmissionReview:

Expand to see AdmissionReview 
{
  "apiVersion": "admission.k8s.io/v1",
  "kind": "AdmissionReview",
  "request": {
    # Random uid uniquely identifying this admission call
    "uid": "705ab4f5-6393-11e8-b7cc-42010a800002",

    # Fully-qualified group/version/kind of the incoming object
    "kind": {"group":"autoscaling","version":"v1","kind":"Scale"},
    # Fully-qualified group/version/kind of the resource being modified
    "resource": {"group":"apps","version":"v1","resource":"deployments"},
    # subresource, if the request is to a subresource
    "subResource": "scale",

    # Fully-qualified group/version/kind of the incoming object in the original request to the API server.
    # This only differs from `kind` if the webhook specified `matchPolicy: Equivalent` and the
    # original request to the API server was converted to a version the webhook registered for.
    "requestKind": {"group":"autoscaling","version":"v1","kind":"Scale"},
    # Fully-qualified group/version/kind of the resource being modified in the original request to the API server.
    # This only differs from `resource` if the webhook specified `matchPolicy: Equivalent` and the
    # original request to the API server was converted to a version the webhook registered for.
    "requestResource": {"group":"apps","version":"v1","resource":"deployments"},
    # subresource, if the request is to a subresource
    # This only differs from `subResource` if the webhook specified `matchPolicy: Equivalent` and the
    # original request to the API server was converted to a version the webhook registered for.
    "requestSubResource": "scale",

    # Name of the resource being modified
    "name": "my-deployment",
    # Namespace of the resource being modified, if the resource is namespaced (or is a Namespace object)
    "namespace": "my-namespace",

    # operation can be CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE, or CONNECT
    "operation": "UPDATE",

    "userInfo": {
      # Username of the authenticated user making the request to the API server
      "username": "admin",
      # UID of the authenticated user making the request to the API server
      "uid": "014fbff9a07c",
      # Group memberships of the authenticated user making the request to the API server
      "groups": ["system:authenticated","my-admin-group"],
      # Arbitrary extra info associated with the user making the request to the API server.
      # This is populated by the API server authentication layer and should be included
      # if any SubjectAccessReview checks are performed by the webhook.
      "extra": {
        "some-key":["some-value1", "some-value2"]
      }
    },

    # object is the new object being admitted.
    # It is null for DELETE operations.
    "object": {"apiVersion":"autoscaling/v1","kind":"Scale",...},
    # oldObject is the existing object.
    # It is null for CREATE and CONNECT operations.
    "oldObject": {"apiVersion":"autoscaling/v1","kind":"Scale",...},
    # options contains the options for the operation being admitted, like meta.k8s.io/v1 CreateOptions, UpdateOptions, or DeleteOptions.
    # It is null for CONNECT operations.
    "options": {"apiVersion":"meta.k8s.io/v1","kind":"UpdateOptions",...},

    # dryRun indicates the API request is running in dry run mode and will not be persisted.
    # Webhooks with side effects should avoid actuating those side effects when dryRun is true.
    # See http://k8s.io/docs/reference/using-api/api-concepts/#make-a-dry-run-request for more details.
    "dryRun": false
  }
}

The ValidationRequest object would look like:

Expand to see the ValidationRequest 
{
  "request": {
    # Random uid uniquely identifying this admission call
    "uid": "705ab4f5-6393-11e8-b7cc-42010a800002",

    # Fully-qualified group/version/kind of the incoming object
    "kind": {"group":"autoscaling","version":"v1","kind":"Scale"},
    # Fully-qualified group/version/kind of the resource being modified
    "resource": {"group":"apps","version":"v1","resource":"deployments"},
    # subresource, if the request is to a subresource
    "subResource": "scale",

    # Fully-qualified group/version/kind of the incoming object in the original request to the API server.
    # This only differs from `kind` if the webhook specified `matchPolicy: Equivalent` and the
    # original request to the API server was converted to a version the webhook registered for.
    "requestKind": {"group":"autoscaling","version":"v1","kind":"Scale"},
    # Fully-qualified group/version/kind of the resource being modified in the original request to the API server.
    # This only differs from `resource` if the webhook specified `matchPolicy: Equivalent` and the
    # original request to the API server was converted to a version the webhook registered for.
    "requestResource": {"group":"apps","version":"v1","resource":"deployments"},
    # subresource, if the request is to a subresource
    # This only differs from `subResource` if the webhook specified `matchPolicy: Equivalent` and the
    # original request to the API server was converted to a version the webhook registered for.
    "requestSubResource": "scale",

    # Name of the resource being modified
    "name": "my-deployment",
    # Namespace of the resource being modified, if the resource is namespaced (or is a Namespace object)
    "namespace": "my-namespace",

    # operation can be CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE, or CONNECT
    "operation": "UPDATE",

    "userInfo": {
      # Username of the authenticated user making the request to the API server
      "username": "admin",
      # UID of the authenticated user making the request to the API server
      "uid": "014fbff9a07c",
      # Group memberships of the authenticated user making the request to the API server
      "groups": ["system:authenticated","my-admin-group"],
      # Arbitrary extra info associated with the user making the request to the API server.
      # This is populated by the API server authentication layer and should be included
      # if any SubjectAccessReview checks are performed by the webhook.
      "extra": {
        "some-key":["some-value1", "some-value2"]
      }
    },

    # object is the new object being admitted.
    # It is null for DELETE operations.
    "object": {"apiVersion":"autoscaling/v1","kind":"Scale",...},
    # oldObject is the existing object.
    # It is null for CREATE and CONNECT operations.
    "oldObject": {"apiVersion":"autoscaling/v1","kind":"Scale",...},
    # options contains the options for the operation being admitted, like meta.k8s.io/v1 CreateOptions, UpdateOptions, or DeleteOptions.
    # It is null for CONNECT operations.
    "options": {"apiVersion":"meta.k8s.io/v1","kind":"UpdateOptions",...},

    # dryRun indicates the API request is running in dry run mode and will not be persisted.
    # Webhooks with side effects should avoid actuating those side effects when dryRun is true.
    # See http://k8s.io/docs/reference/using-api/api-concepts/#make-a-dry-run-request for more details.
    "dryRun": false
  },
  "settings": {
    # policy settings
  }
}

The ValidationResponse object

The validate function returns the outcome of its validation using a ValidationResponse object.

The ValidationResponse is structured in the following way:

{
  # mandatory
  "accepted": <boolean>,

  # optional, ignored if accepted - recommended for rejections
  "message": <string>,

  # optional, ignored if accepted
  "code": <integer>,

  # optional, used by mutation policies
  "mutated_object": <string>
}

These message and code attributes can be specified when the request is not accepted. The message is a free-form textual error and code represents an HTTP error code.

If the request is accepted, the message and code values are ignored by the Kubernetes API server if present.

If message or code are provided, and the request is not accepted, then the Kubernetes API server returns this information, as part of the body of the error, to the Kubernetes API client that issued the rejected request.

The mutated_object is an optional field used only by mutating policies. This is the topic of the next chapter.