Test your Ingress or Gateway

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A new Ingress controller or Gateway needs a quick check: does it route a path to the right Service, strip a prefix when asked, and pass assets through? hello-kubernetes answers all three on one page. The message says which release answered, and the page’s stylesheet and logo load only if the paths are right.

You need kubectl, Helm 4, and the Ingress controller or Gateway to test.

Install two releases

Install two releases under different paths, one that passes the prefix on and one that has it stripped. For an Ingress, set your class:

helm install pass-on oci://ghcr.io/paulbouwer/charts/hello-kubernetes \
  --namespace routing-test --create-namespace \
  --set ingress.enabled=true --set ingress.className=<your class> \
  --set pathPrefix=/test/pass-on --set rewritePath=false \
  --set service.type=ClusterIP --set-string message="pass-on answered" --wait

For a Gateway, use --set httpRoute.enabled=true and --set 'httpRoute.parentRefs[0].name=<your gateway>' in place of the two ingress values. Then install a second release with --set pathPrefix=/test/stripped --set rewritePath=true and the message stripped answered. With an Ingress, a stripped prefix also needs your controller’s annotation; see Behind an Ingress.

Check each result

Open	You should see	If not
`http://<address>/test/pass-on/`	pass-on answered	The route doesn’t reach the Service. Check the class or the Gateway’s `allowedRoutes`.
`http://<address>/test/stripped/`	stripped answered	The prefix wasn’t stripped, so the app returned 404. Check the rewrite annotation or `URLRewrite` support.
Both pages	the Kubernetes logo and the dark theme	A plain, unstyled page means the assets didn’t load: the proxy routes the page, but not the paths under it.
`http://<address>/test/other/`	a 404 from your controller	Something matches paths too widely.

The table on each page also shows the pod and node that answered, so you can check that the controller reaches pods on every node.

Clean up

helm uninstall pass-on stripped --namespace routing-test
kubectl delete namespace routing-test

The e2e tests use these same checks on Traefik, the NGINX Ingress Controller and NGINX Gateway Fabric.