The ops library

The ops library is a Python framework for developing and testing Kubernetes and machine charms. While charms can be written in any language, ops defines the latest standard, and charmers are encouraged to use Python with ops for all charms. The library is an official component of the Charm SDK, itself a part of the Juju universe.

• ops is available on PyPI.
• The latest version of ops requires Python 3.8 or above.

Give it a try

Let's use ops to build a Kubernetes charm:

Set up

See Charm SDK | Set up an Ubuntu charm-dev VM with Multipass.
Choose the MicroK8s track.

Write your charm

On your Multipass VM, create a charm directory and use Charmcraft to initialise your charm file structure:

mkdir ops-example
cd ops-example
charmcraft init

This has created a standard charm directory structure. Poke around.

Things to note:

• The metadata.yaml file shows that what we have is an example charm called ops-example, which uses an OCI image resource httpbin from kennethreitz/httpbin.

• The requirements.txt file lists the version of ops to use.

• The src/charm.py file imports ops and uses ops constructs to create a charm class OpsExampleCharm, observe Juju events, and pair them to event handlers:

import ops

class OpsExampleCharm(ops.CharmBase):
    """Charm the service."""

    def __init__(self, *args):
        super().__init__(*args)
        self.framework.observe(self.on['httpbin'].pebble_ready, self._on_httpbin_pebble_ready)
        self.framework.observe(self.on.config_changed, self._on_config_changed)

    def _on_httpbin_pebble_ready(self, event: ops.PebbleReadyEvent):
        """Define and start a workload using the Pebble API.

        Change this example to suit your needs. You'll need to specify the right entrypoint and
        environment configuration for your specific workload.

        Learn more about interacting with Pebble at at https://juju.is/docs/sdk/pebble.
        """
        # Get a reference the container attribute on the PebbleReadyEvent
        container = event.workload
        # Add initial Pebble config layer using the Pebble API
        container.add_layer("httpbin", self._pebble_layer, combine=True)
        # Make Pebble reevaluate its plan, ensuring any services are started if enabled.
        container.replan()
        # Learn more about statuses in the SDK docs:
        # https://juju.is/docs/sdk/constructs#heading--statuses
        self.unit.status = ops.ActiveStatus()

See more: ops.PebbleReadyEvent

• The tests/unit/test_charm.py file imports ops.testing and uses it to set up a testing harness:

import ops.testing

class TestCharm(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        self.harness = ops.testing.Harness(OpsExampleCharm)
        self.addCleanup(self.harness.cleanup)
        self.harness.begin()

    def test_httpbin_pebble_ready(self):
        # Expected plan after Pebble ready with default config
        expected_plan = {
            "services": {
                "httpbin": {
                    "override": "replace",
                    "summary": "httpbin",
                    "command": "gunicorn -b 0.0.0.0:80 httpbin:app -k gevent",
                    "startup": "enabled",
                    "environment": {"GUNICORN_CMD_ARGS": "--log-level info"},
                }
            },
        }
        # Simulate the container coming up and emission of pebble-ready event
        self.harness.container_pebble_ready("httpbin")
        # Get the plan now we've run PebbleReady
        updated_plan = self.harness.get_container_pebble_plan("httpbin").to_dict()
        # Check we've got the plan we expected
        self.assertEqual(expected_plan, updated_plan)
        # Check the service was started
        service = self.harness.model.unit.get_container("httpbin").get_service("httpbin")
        self.assertTrue(service.is_running())
        # Ensure we set an ActiveStatus with no message
        self.assertEqual(self.harness.model.unit.status, ops.ActiveStatus())

See more: ops.testing.Harness

Explore further, start editing the files, or skip ahead and pack the charm:

charmcraft pack

If you didn't take any wrong turn or simply left the charm exactly as it was, this has created a file called ops-example_ubuntu-22.04-amd64.charm (the architecture bit may be different depending on your system's architecture). Use this name and the resource from the metadata.yaml to deploy your example charm to your local MicroK8s cloud:

juju deploy ./ops-example_ubuntu-22.04-amd64.charm --resource httpbin-image=kennethreitz/httpbin

Congratulations, you’ve just built your first Kubernetes charm using ops!

Clean up

See Charm SDK | Clean up.

Next steps

Learn more

• Read our user documentation, which includes other guides showing ops in action
• Dig into the ops API reference

Chat with us

Read our Code of conduct and:

• Join our chat: Mattermost
• Join our forum: Discourse

File an issue

• Report an ops bug using GitHub issues
• Raise a general https://juju.is/docs documentation issue on GitHub | juju/docs

Make your mark

• Read our documentation contributor guidelines and help improve a doc
• Read our codebase contributor guidelines and help improve the codebase
• Write a charm and publish it on Charmhub