Manage API Resources with kubectl

Kubernetes exposes resources via RESTful API calls, which allows all resources to be managed via HTTP, JSON or even XML, the typical protocol being HTTP. The state of the resources can be changed using standard HTTP verbs (e.g. GET, POST, PATCH, DELETE, etc.).

kubectl has a verbose mode argument which shows details from where the command gets and updates information. Other output includes curl commands you could use to obtain the same result. While the verbosity accepts levels from zero to any number, there is currently no verbosity value greater than ten. You can check this out for kubectl get. The output below has been formatted for clarity:

$ kubectl --v=10 get pods firstpod

....
I1215 17:46:47.860958 29909 round_trippers.go:417]
curl -k -v -XGET -H "Accept: application/json"
-H "User-Agent: kubectl/v1.8.5 (linux/amd64) kubernetes/cce11c6"
https://10.128.0.3:6443/api/v1/namespaces/default/pods/firstpod
....

If you delete this pod, you will see that the HTTP method changes from XGET to XDELETE.

$ kubectl --v=10 delete pods firstpod

....
I1215 17:49:32.166115 30452 round_trippers.go:417]
curl -k -v -XDELETE -H "Accept: application/json, */*"
-H "User-Agent: kubectl/v1.8.5 (linux/amd64) kubernetes/cce11c6"
https://10.128.0.3:6443/api/v1/namespaces/default/pods/firstpod
....