Streamlining E2E Tests: Unifying Mock Providers For KGateway

Hey guys, let's talk about something super important for keeping our KGateway development smooth and efficient: e2e test mock provider unification. Right now, we've got a bit of a scattered approach with our end-to-end tests, and honestly, it's making things more complicated than they need to be. We're using a couple of different mock providers for various e2e test scenarios, and while they get the job done individually, having multiple systems creates unnecessary overhead and potential inconsistencies. Imagine trying to test a complex system like KGateway where authentication and authorization are absolutely critical, but your testing environments are fragmented. It's like trying to build a LEGO castle with pieces from three different sets – eventually, you'll run into issues. This article is all about understanding why this unification is so crucial, what our current landscape looks like, and how we can leverage a powerful tool like Keycloak to bring everything under one roof. We're talking about making our testing process more robust, easier to maintain, and ultimately, a better experience for everyone on the team. So, buckle up, because we're diving deep into how a unified mock provider strategy can be a total game-changer for our KGateway e2e tests. We’ll explore the specifics of our current dummy-idp and dummy-auth0 setups, analyze their limitations when viewed through the lens of a growing, complex project like KGateway, and then lay out a compelling case for why a robust, feature-rich solution such as Keycloak is not just a good idea, but an essential step forward. This isn't just about tidying up; it's about building a foundation for future scalability and reliability in our testing efforts. We want our e2e tests to be a bastion of confidence, not a source of frustration, and achieving mock provider unification is a massive stride in that direction. The aim is to simplify the architecture for KGateway's e2e tests, ensuring that new features and authentication flows can be integrated and tested with minimal friction and maximum confidence. The ultimate goal here is to drastically improve our developer experience and the overall quality of our KGateway project by providing a consistent, reliable, and powerful platform for all our e2e testing needs.

The Current Landscape: A Tale of Disparate Mock Providers

Right now, when it comes to KGateway's e2e tests, we're working with a few different systems, which, while functional, present challenges for maintenance and consistency. Let's break down what's currently happening. First off, our remote JWT fetch e2e tests are relying on https://github.com/kgateway-dev/kgateway/tree/main/hack/dummy-idp. This dummy-idp is a straightforward, custom-built mock provider designed to simulate a basic Identity Provider for these specific JWT-related scenarios. It's great because it's lightweight and does exactly what it's told for those particular tests, but its simplicity also means it has limited capabilities. It's not built to handle complex authentication flows like OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect (OIDC) with all their intricate redirects and token exchanges. Think of it as a specialized tool for one job; it does that job well, but you wouldn't use a screwdriver to hammer a nail, right? Its focus on just remote JWT fetching means it lacks the breadth required for a comprehensive testing suite that needs to simulate various IDP behaviors. This creates a significant gap when we need to expand our testing scope beyond simple JWT validation, forcing us to look for other solutions for more complex scenarios.

Then, we have the authn mcp tests. These tests, guys, require the full OAuth 2.0 flow, which is a whole different ball game compared to simple JWT fetching. For this, we're using a completely different mock provider based on the agw example, found at https://github.com/kgateway-dev/kgateway/tree/main/hack/dummy-auth0. This dummy-auth0 solution is more robust, capable of simulating the OAuth 2.0 dance with all its redirects, consent screens, and token exchanges. It was necessary because dummy-idp simply couldn't handle these complex authentication protocols. So, immediately, we have two distinct mock providers serving different but related purposes within our e2e test suite. This duality means that our e2e test environment is fragmented. Developers need to understand how both dummy-idp and dummy-auth0 work, how to set them up, and how to debug issues specific to each. This fragmentation leads to increased cognitive load and maintenance overhead. If a bug is found in a mock provider, we might have to fix it in two different places, or worse, struggle to correlate issues across different testing setups.

And to add another layer to this complexity, we have Envoy OIDC on the horizon, and the plan is to use Keycloak for those tests. Keycloak is a full-fledged Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution, incredibly powerful and versatile, but also more complex to set up and manage than our current dummy solutions. So, in total, we're looking at potentially three different mock providers – dummy-idp, dummy-auth0, and soon Keycloak – each with its own quirks, configurations, and deployment strategies. This discrepancy is not just an aesthetic problem; it directly impacts our developer experience, the speed of development, and the reliability of our e2e tests. Maintaining multiple mock providers means more code to write, more configurations to manage, and more potential points of failure. It makes it harder for new team members to get up to speed with our testing infrastructure and creates inconsistencies in how different authentication scenarios are tested. Ultimately, this scattered approach makes our e2e tests less efficient, more prone to errors, and significantly more challenging to scale as KGateway evolves. The critical insight here is that while each mock provider was chosen for a specific reason at a specific time, the cumulative effect of these choices is now presenting a significant hurdle to achieving a truly unified, robust, and maintainable testing environment for all KGateway's e2e tests. This fragmentation also means that sharing test patterns, utility functions, or common fixtures across different e2e test categories becomes incredibly difficult, further increasing the development burden and potentially introducing subtle inconsistencies in how tests are structured and executed. Therefore, tackling this issue head-on with a unification strategy is not just a luxury; it's a necessity for the long-term health and agility of the KGateway project.

Why Unification Matters: Boosting Efficiency and Developer Experience

Okay, so we've established that having multiple e2e test mock providers is a bit of a headache. Now, let's dive into why unification matters so much and how it can drastically improve our developer experience and the overall efficiency of our KGateway project. Seriously, guys, this isn't just about tidiness; it's about making our lives easier, our code better, and our testing more reliable. The benefits of moving to a single, unified mock provider are multifaceted and incredibly impactful, touching every aspect of our development and testing lifecycle. One of the biggest wins we'd see is reduced maintenance overhead. Imagine having one codebase, one set of configurations, and one deployment strategy for all our authentication-related e2e tests. No more juggling dummy-idp and dummy-auth0 – just one consistent system to manage. This frees up developer time that would otherwise be spent debugging issues in disparate systems or updating multiple mock provider implementations. Fewer moving parts mean less chance for things to break, and when they do, a single point of investigation. This directly translates to more time focused on building KGateway features rather than maintaining testing infrastructure, which is a massive productivity boost.

Another critical advantage is improved consistency across our e2e tests. With a unified mock provider, every e2e test that involves authentication or authorization will be run against the same underlying identity system. This eliminates the