Stop mocking - develop frontends with real K8s setups
summary
Mocks drift and cost time; this shows a concrete alternative: federating multiple backend GraphQL interfaces into one common interface with an Apollo federated gateway, running a full Kubernetes dev cluster locally (k3d / minikube / unicube) so the frontend hits the real stack. Frontend uses Vue.js and a webpack dev server, Keycloak handles auth, and GraphQL queries and mutations execute against the local cluster state. The claim: environment parity reduces hidden bugs and maintenance overhead.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Real K8s setups for frontend
- 1:28Mocking APIs is problematic
- 3:35Traditional API handling
- 5:45API mocking costs
- 9:02Environment parity in cloud native
- 11:31K8s dev environment definition
- 14:03Environment parity in practice
- 15:05Local prod environment replication
- 16:32Real K8s setups for frontend dev
- 17:35Demo platform architecture
- 19:20Local K8s cluster setup
- 20:24Authenticating frontend cluster
- 21:30Accessing local services
- 22:13Testing GraphQL in K8s
- 23:36Final thoughts on K8s frontend
- 24:20Open source tools & resources
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