VMware vSphere SDKs and Tools 8.0

8.0 7.0 6.7 6.5

Property Provider Adapters

Queries to a Property Provider Adapter accept one or more specific vSphere objects, and return one or more properties for those objects. A Property Provider Adapter registers with the Data Service to advertise which types of properties it can return. When the Data Service receives a query for one of the registered property types, the Data Service routes the query to the appropriate Property Provider Adapter for processing.
You may not register a provider for an existing VMware property or object type. For example, if your solution needs to identify a host by an alternate name, you may create an adapter to implement a property such as
alt_name
, but it may not modify the original
name
 property.

PropertyProviderAdapter
 Interface

A Property Provider Adapter must implement the
PropertyProviderAdapter
 interface of the
com.vmware.vise.data.query
 package. The
PropertyProviderAdapter
 interface publishes a single method named
getProperties()
. Your Property Provider Adapter service must provide an implementation of this method. The Data Service calls the
getProperties()
 method of your adapter in response to an appropriate query for the properties your adapter is registered to provide.
The method implementation in your service must accept as its parameter an object of type
com.vmware.vise.data.query.PropertyRequestSpec
, and must return an object of type
com.vmware.vise.data.query.ResultSet
. 
public ResultSet getProperties(PropertyRequestSpec propertyRequest)
Your service implementation of the
getProperties()
 method can retrieve and format data in any way you choose. However, your implementation must return the results as a
ResultSet
 object. You use the
PropertyRequestSpec
 object to obtain the query list of target vSphere objects and desired properties. The
PropertyRequestSpec
 object contains an objects array and a properties array, which respectively contain the target vSphere objects and requested properties.
For additional information on
ResultSet
,
PropertyRequestSpec
, and other features in the
com.vmware.vise.data.query
 package, see the Java API reference included in the SDK.

Registering a Property Provider Adapter

You must register your Property Provider Adapter for the adapter to work with the Data Service. You register your Property Provider Adapter with the Data Service by using the
DataServiceExtensionRegistry
 service. The
DataServiceExtensionRegistry
 service contains a method named
registerDataAdapter()
 that you must call to register your Property Provider Adapter.
A best practice for registering your adapter is to pass
DataServiceExtensionRegistry
 as a parameter to your Property Provider Adapter class constructor, and call
registerDataAdapter()
 from that constructor.
Property Provider Adapter
The following example shows a Property Provider Adapter class. The class constructor method registers the adapter with the Data Service.
The class constructor method
MyAdapter()
 constructs an array of property types that the adapter can supply to the Data Service in the array named
providerTypes
. The constructor then calls the Data Service Extension Registry method named
registerDataAdapter
 to register the Property Provider Adapter with the Data Service. The Data Service calls the override method
getProperties()
 when the Data Service receives a query for the kinds of properties that were specified at registration. The
getProperties()
 method must retrieve the necessary properties, format them as a
ResultSet
 object, and return that
ResultSet
. 
package com.myAdapter.PropertyProvider;
 
import com.vmware.vise.data.query;
import com.vmware.vise.data.query.PropertyProviderAdapter;
import com.vmware.vise.data.query.ResultSet;
import com.vmware.vise.data.query.type;
 
public class MyAdapter implements PropertyProviderAdapter {
 
  public MyAdapter(DataServiceExtensionRegistry extensionRegistry) {
    TypeInfo vmTypeInfo = new TypeInfo();
    vmTypeInfo.type = "VirtualMachine";
    vmTypeInfo.properties = new String[] { "myVMdata" };
    TypeInfo[] providerTypes = new TypeInfo[] {vmTypeInfo};
 
    extensionRegistry.registerDataAdapter(this, providerTypes);
  }
 
  @Override
  public ResultSet getProperties(PropertyRequestSpec propertyRequest) {
    // Logic to retrieve properties and return as result set
    ...
  }
}

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