Retrieve a Property from a Specified Managed Object

This procedure uses

PropertyCollector

to retrieve a property from a single

VirtualMachine

object with the

RetrievePropertiesEx

method, by obtaining a managed object reference to the parent object of the

VirtualMachine

in the inventory.

For this task you need:

A virtual machine managed object reference in a variable named

vmRef

An authenticated Web Services session with the vSphere server that manages the virtual machine.

VimPort

binding provider referenced by the variable

methods

, which is attached to the vSphere server connection context.

PropertyCollector

instance referenced by the variable

pCollector

This procedure shows only how to use the

PropertyCollector

. For a description of server connection and getting a reference to the

PropertyCollector

, see Build a Simple vSphere Client Application for the Web Services SDK.

To retrieve a reference to the parent object of a specific virtual machine, you must:

Prepare a

PropertySpec

to specify the

parent

property and the

parentVApp

property of the

VirtualMachine

class. A virtual machine can have only one parent, but the parent can be either a

Folder

object or a

VirtualApp

object. This example collects both properties, one of which will be null.

Prepare an

ObjectSpec

to identify the starting object, which is the specified

VirtualMachine

. There is no need for a

TraversalSpec

because the property belongs to the starting object itself. However, the

ObjectSpec.skip

property is set to

false

; a value of

true

would cause the

PropertyCollector

not to collect properties from the starting object.

Assemble a

PropertyFilterSpec

from the prepared data.

Invoke the

RetrievePropertiesEx

method.

Declare a function that accepts a virtual machine

MOref

and returns a

MOref

to its parent

object.in

a key-value pair.

  private static DynamicProperty getVMParentProperty(ManagedObjectReference vmRef)
  throws Exception {

Specify the properties for retrieval (

VirtualMachine.parent

and

VirtualMachine.parentVApp

Because the

VirtualMachine

has two mutually exclusive parent properties, depending on the parent type, this code collects both properties.

    PropertySpec pSpec = new PropertySpec();
    pSpec.setType("VirtualMachine");
    pSpec.getPathSet().add("parent");
    pSpec.getPathSet().add("parentVApp");

Create an

ObjectSpec

to define the property collection.

Use the

setObj

method to specify that the

vmRef

is the starting object for this property collection. Set the

skip

property to

false

to indicate that you want to collect properties from the starting object. Omit the

selectSet

property because the property collection does not need to traverse away from the starting object.

    ObjectSpec oSpec = new ObjectSpec();
    oSpec.setObj(vmRef);
    oSpec.setSkip(false);

Create a

PropertyFilterSpec

and add the object and property specs to it.

    PropertyFilterSpec fSpec = new PropertyFilterSpec();
    fSpec.getObjectSet().add(oSpec);
    fSpec.getPropSet().add(pSpec);

Create a list for the filters and add the property filter spec to it.

    List<PropertyFilterSpec> fSpecList = new ArrayList<PropertyFilterSpec>();
    fSpecList.add(fSpec);

Use the filter spec to retrieve the property collection from the server.

    RetrieveOptions ro = new RetrieveOptions();
    RetrieveResult props = methods.retrievePropertiesEx(pCollector,fSpecList,ro);

Unwrap the parent property.

    if (props != null) {
      for (ObjectContent oc : props.getObjects()) {
        List<DynamicProperty> dps = oc.getPropSet();
        if (dps != null) {
          for (DynamicProperty dp : dps) {
            if (dp.getName().equals("parent") || dp.getName().equals("parentVApp")) {
              return dp;
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
    System.out.println("Parent not found.");
    throw new Exception();
  }

The method returns a key-value pair,

name

and

val

, indicating the name of the parent property and a managed object reference to the parent object.

  DynamicProperty parent = getVMParentProperty( vmRef );
  if (parent.getName().equals("parentVApp")) {
    System.out.format("VApp MOref: %s", parent.getVal());
  } else {
    System.out.format("Folder MOref: %s", parent.getVal());
  }

Property Collector

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VMware vSphere SDKs and Tools 8.0

Retrieve a Property from a Specified Managed Object