Best Practices for Extending the User Interface Layer

When developing extensions for the user interface layer of the

vSphere Client

, follow these best practices.

Create pointer node extensions on the Object Navigator home page only for major applications and solutions. This approach provides consistent and meaningful user experience for the customized

vSphere Client

When you create action set extensions for a particular type of vSphere object, you must use the extensions filtering mechanism. The defined action sets must be visible only when the user selects the relevant vSphere object type.

Use the REST API for retrieving data from the service layer. Use proxies only for adding, editing, and deleting issued data requests.

For better performance, avoid making proxy calls that require more than several seconds to return a response. A best practice is to design your extensions to submit a task that returns immediately, and to track the task progress.

If you use proxies for data requests, verify that you receive the request response before sending another request through the proxy.

If you use localization data for your plug-in package, follow these recommendations:

Set the

locale

attribute in the

element of the

plugin.xml

manifest file to the value

{locale}

. Using the

{locale}

value instructs the

vSphere Client

to display the plug-in by using the current

vSphere Client

locale.

The following XML fragment shows how the

element can be used in the plug-in module manifest file.

<plugin id="com.vmware.samples.htmlsample"
   defaultBundle="com_vmware_samples_htmlsample">

   <resources baseUrl="locales/">
      <resource>com_vmware_samples_htmlsample</resource>
   </resources>

....

</plugin>

To avoid collisions with other localized plug-in packages, set a unique resource bundle name to the

defaultBundle

attribute of the

element in the plug-in manifest file. Use your company name and product name as part of the resource bundle name to make it unique.

Make sure that the filenames of your resource files end with _en_US instead of -en_US

Best Practices for Developing Extensions for the vSphere Client

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VMware vSphere SDKs and Tools 8.0

Best Practices for Extending the User Interface Layer