How do I access the Kubernetes api from within a pod container?

In the official documentation I found this:

https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/access-cluster/#accessing-the-api-from-a-pod

Apparently I was missing a security token that I didn't need in a previous version of Kubernetes. From that, I devised what I think is a simpler solution than running a proxy or installing golang on my container. See this example that gets the information, from the api, for the current container:

KUBE_TOKEN=$(cat /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token)
curl -sSk -H "Authorization: Bearer $KUBE_TOKEN" \
      https://$KUBERNETES_SERVICE_HOST:$KUBERNETES_PORT_443_TCP_PORT/api/v1/namespaces/default/pods/$HOSTNAME

I also use include a simple binary, jq (http://stedolan.github.io/jq/download/), to parse the json for use in bash scripts.

Every pod has a service account automatically applied that allows it to access the apiserver. The service account provides both client credentials, in the form of a bearer token, and the certificate authority certificate that was used to sign the certificate presented by the apiserver. With these two pieces of information, you can create a secure, authenticated connection to the apisever without using curl -k (aka curl --insecure):

curl -v --cacert /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/ca.crt -H "Authorization: Bearer $(cat /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token)" https://kubernetes.default.svc/