Using fzf with kubectl as REPL

I was pretty impressed by the article fzf-live-repl and decide to adapt these techniques in my daily work with Kubernetes.

Using fzf as JQ repl

Command in the article above didn’t work for me:

echo '' | fzf --print-query --preview 'jq {q} /path/to/json/file'

After some investigation, it turned out that FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS, which I’ve described in FZF on Fedora were breaking preview. Also I wanted to be able to pass various resources and arguments into the query. So to do this, I used following tricks:

• define function to be able to pass arguments
• use $* to pass all arguments into function
• set up local FZF environment option by using ()

I end up with following function:

kgjq() { (FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS='';kubectl get *$ -o json > /tmp/kgjq.json;echo ''  | fzf --print-query --preview 'jq {q} /tmp/kgjq.json';) }

Here’s how it works:

As you might guess, after you press enter, resulting jsonpath will pop in your command line. To make function work, put it into your .bash_profile

Using fzf as kubectl preview

Another cool feature I thought about was fuzzy finding kubernetes resources with live preview and ability to edit this resource without leaving fzf I know about k9s and kubectl-aliases but I tend to minimalism in my settings.

Again, I’ll be using bash function with $* to pass all variables into it:

kg() { kubectl get $* -o name | fzf --preview 'kubectl get {} -o yaml' --bind "enter:execute(kubectl get {} -o yaml | nvim )"; }

It’s working very well:

The trick I’m using here is binding enter in fzf to execute kubectl get, passing selected resource name as parameter, and passing output to nvim(which can read stdin without additional keys). I will think about adding --export option to kubectl or passing multiple files to nvim, or about refreshing fuzzy list without leaving fzf, but even now I’m really enjoying it.

Futher improvements

After a few days after writing this post I’ve done following improvementes to kg function:

kg() {
    kubectl get $* -o name | \
        fzf --preview 'kubectl get {} -o yaml' \
            --bind "ctrl-\:execute(kubectl get {+} -o yaml | nvim )" \
            --bind "ctrl-r:reload(kubectl get $* -o name)" --header 'Press CTRL-R to reload' \
            --bind "ctrl-]:execute(kubectl edit {+})";
     }

• Replace {} with {+} to allow editing multiple files
• Add new binding to edit live kubernetes resource
• Add new binding to reload preview list

So I end up using following shortcuts:

• tab - multi-select entry under cursor
• ctrl-a - select all
• ctrl-r - reload preview list
• ctrl-\ - edit a local copy of selected resources in neovim
• ctrl-] - edit live version of kubernetes resource with default editor
• enter - exit from fzf and print current selection
• shift-up - move preview window line up
• shift-down - move preview window line down