Cat Facts Operator

Combining Hybrid-Cloud Technology With Cats

Cat Facts? 🙀

• Do you like to have fun?
• Do you like OpenShift?

If you answered either question, install this operator! (You don't even have to like cats...)

Seriously, what is it? 🤔

Red Hat allows applications to extend OpenShift's web UI with OpenShift Console Dynamic Plugins. Red Hat provides docs for building plugins and deploying through Helm. They don't provide a good operator-based deployment reference.

Cat Facts Operator is the community reference for operator-based OpenShift console dynamic plugin deployment, combining hybrid-cloud technology with cats.

The operator is Go-based and built with Operator SDK. The operator also bundles a React+PatternFly 6-based OpenShift Console Dynamic Plugin that serves custom content in the OpenShift web console to manage operator resources.

Cat Facts Operator provides a Custom Resource Definition (CRD) for CatFact. A CatFact is a Kubernetes resource that contains metadata along with a fact about cats. Facts are queried from https://catfact.ninja/fact, a free API that generates cat facts.

Requirements 📋

• OKD/OpenShift 4.19 or later (Kubernetes 1.32.0+)

NOTE: OCP 4.19+ is required because the OpenShift dynamic console plugin uses PatternFly 6, which was introduced starting with OpenShift 4.19.

Installing 🚀

OperatorHub

I'm working on getting Cat Facts listed in OperatorHub. In the meantime, install it by adding the custom CatalogSource below.

Custom Catalog (Testing)

Apply this object. After ~1 minute, search for "Cat Facts" under Ecosystem > Software Catalog (previously labeled OperatorHub).

apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: CatalogSource
metadata:
  name: cat-facts-catalog
  namespace: openshift-marketplace
spec:
  sourceType: grpc
  image: quay.io/ryanmillerc/cat-facts-catalog:latest
  displayName: Cat Facts
  publisher: Ryan Miller
  updateStrategy:
    registryPoll:
      interval: 10m

When installing, accept the default options for everything except for Console Plugin. For security, OpenShift defaults Console Plugin to Disabled on operators that come from community catalogs. **Select Enable for Console plugin before installing the operator.

It will take a few moments for the operator controller and console dynamic plugin containers to download and launch. Within a few moments, you'll be able to refresh and enjoy Cat Facts Operator.

How to Use Cat Facts 😻

1. Navigate to Cat Facts > Cat Fact Catalog on the left-side navigation pane of the OpenShift console
2. Select Create CatFact
3. Select the new CatFact card to view it
4. Select Create CatFact again
5. Select Create CatFact 20 more times!!!
6. If you get bored and want to delete all your CatFacts, select Delete All

Uninstalling 😿

To uninstall, go to Ecosystem > Installed Operators in the OpenShift console. Select "Cat Facts Operator" and uninstall.

After uninstalling, run these commands to clean up resources the operator leaves behind:

oc delete catfacts --all -A
oc delete crd catfacts.ryanmillerc.github.io
oc delete csv --all -n cat-facts-operator
oc delete consoleplugin cat-facts-operator-console-plugin
oc delete namespace cat-facts-operator

# If using Test Cat Facts OLM CatalogSource
oc delete -n openshift-marketplace catalogsource cat-facts-catalog

Acknowledgments

Cat facts are generated by the public Cat Facts API.

Cat icons/emojis used in this project were created by Emily Jäger, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, and are available here.