Helm: Render Chart Templates Locally

This post will help you to understand how to render helm chart templates locally using Helm command along with its step by step instruction and helm command example.

Helm has the ability and feature to render any helm chart templates that allows users to visualize the configuration of kubernetes resources before applying it.

Table of Contents

1. Prerequisites

2. Install Helm

3. Create Helm Chart

4. Render Chart Templates Locally

5. Customize Chart Values

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Let's Get Started.

Prerequisites

If you want to render chart templates locally, then we must have the below prerequisite in place.

• A working Kubernetes cluster
• Helm installed on your local machine

Install Helm

In case, helm is not installed, please follow the mentioned steps below. Installing Helm is very easy procedure.

a) Go to official Helm website at https://helm.sh/.

b) Download appropriate version of Helm that suits for your operating system.
c) Install Helm for your specific operating system by following the instructions they provided.

Create Helm Chart

In order to render chart templates, we must need a Helm chart. If you already have a helm chart, you can skip this step. Else, please follow the below mentioned instructions to create basic helm chart:

a) Open any terminal or command prompt.
b) Run the below helm command to create new helm chart named "mychart":

helm create mychart

Above helm command will create a basic helm chart called "mychart".

Render Chart Templates Locally

As we have created a new helm chart, let's see how to render chart templates locally.

a) Navigate to chart's directory using simple cd command:

cd mychart

b) Use helm template command to render the helm chart templates locally.

helm template .

Above helm template command tells Helm to render all the templates available in the current chart directory and display the result as output to the console.

Customize Chart Values

If you want to customize any helm chart values during rendering, you can use helm template command along with --set flag followed by required key-value pairs. For example.

helm template . --set service.port=8080 --set replicaCount=3

Above helm template command will set the service.port value to 8080 and replicaCount value to 3 during the template rendering process itself.

Also I have provided more helm command examples.

Example 1: Rendering templates from specific release

helm template release-name <chart-name>

Above helm template command renders the chart templates from specific release named "release-name" using the mentioned helm chart.

Example 2: Rendering templates with different release name

helm template . --name my-release

Above helm template command renders the chart templates from current helm chart but it will assign custom release name "my-release" during rendering itself.

Example 3: Rendering specific chart template

helm template . --show-only templates/service.yaml

This helm command renders only "service.yaml" template from current helm chart and displays its output in the console.

That's it for this post. Keep practicing and have fun. Leave your comments if any.

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