Creating Data View Extensions

When you create data view extensions for the

vSphere Client

user interface layer, follow these general recommendations:

You do not need to change the Data Adapter services running in the service layer.

You can use the generic

DataAccessController

Java class provided with each generated plug-in project to handle HTTP JSON

GET

data requests.

You must access data through the

vSphere Client

server and avoid calling directly your back end services or database.

Common Data Access Pattern

You can use the pattern demonstrated in the

html-sample

in the SDK to access data from the

vCenter Server

system from your plug-ins:

The Ajax

GET

request created in your JavaScript code has the following format:

/plugin_context_path/rest/data/properties/objectId?properties=properties-list

, where objectId is the object ID of the currently selected vSphere object, and properties-list is the comma-separated list of properties that must be retrieved for that object.

The

web.xml

deployment descriptor located in the

WEB-INF

folder of the UI bundle of your plug-in contains the

<servlet-mapping>

element that defines the

/rest/*

URL pattern for invoking the

springServlet

servlet.

   <servlet-mapping>
      <servlet-name>springServlet</servlet-name>
      <url-pattern>/rest/*</url-pattern>
   </servlet-mapping>

The

bundle-context.xml

file located in the

WEB-INF\spring

folder declares the

dataAccessController

bean for the

DataAccessController

class that is available in the Java service bundle of your plug-in.

<bean name="dataAccessController" 
     class="com.vmware.samples.vspherewssdk.mvc.DataAccessController" />

The

DataAccessController

class included in the Java service bundle of your plug-in has the

@RequestMapping

annotation set to process the HTTP JSON

GET

for the

/data

endpoint. The

getProperties()

generic method has the

@RequestMapping

annotation set to the

/properties/{objectId}

value to handle the Ajax

GET

requests created in your JavaScript code.

    ...
@Controller
@RequestMapping(value = "/data", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public class DataAccessController {

    ...

   @RequestMapping(value = "/properties/{objectId}")
   @ResponseBody
   public Map<String, Object> getProperties(
            @PathVariable("objectId") String encodedObjectId,
            @RequestParam(value = "properties", required = true) String properties)

    ...

The

getProperties()

generic method uses the

QueryUtil

class to create a Data Service query for the requested list of vSphere object properties. The query results are returned to the Web browser as JSON data.

     ...
      Object ref = getDecodedReference(encodedObjectId);
      String objectId = _objectReferenceService.getUid(ref);

      String[] props = properties.split(",");
      PropertyValue[] pvs = QueryUtil.getProperties(_dataService, ref, props);
      Map<String, Object> propsMap = new HashMap<String, Object>();
      propsMap.put(OBJECT_ID, objectId);
      for (PropertyValue pv : pvs) {
         propsMap.put(pv.propertyName, pv.value);
      }
      return propsMap;
   }

The JavaScript code can display the data returned by the Ajax

GET

request as needed.

Developing HTML-Based User Interface Extensions

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VMware vSphere SDKs and Tools 8.0

Creating Data View Extensions

Common Data Access Pattern