vSphere REST API Sample Web Application

Originally presented at VMworld 2017 in session SER1912BU VMware Open-Source SDKs: From Getting Started to Web App in One Hour

Basic nodejs Express web application illustrating connecting to the vSphere REST API endpoint using JavaScript.

NOTE: This app is for demonstration purposes only and should NOT be used against your production vSphere environment until/unless you have thoroughly reviewed/modified the code specifically for your environment.

Screenshot

Install and run the web app

From the vSphere Automation SDK for REST folder do the following:

$ cd samples/webapp
$ npm install

Edit Configuration File

If you are not using Wiremock (see below) you will need to edit the file ./samples/webapp/.env and set your HOST, USERID and PASS vars to point to your vSphere staging host.

[email protected]
PASS=VMware1!
LOGIN_PATH=/rest/com/vmware/cis/session
TITLE=vSphere REST Demo
HOST=<url to your vcenter host>

Setup mock infrastructure

Included with this repo are a set of Wiremock files allowing you to mock the vSphere REST API and run the sample. You'll need to download wiremock and run it as follows:

java -jar wiremock-standalone-2.5.0.jar --https-port=8082 --verbose --root-dir <path-to-repo-wiremock-folder>

Example:

java -jar ~/Downloads/wiremock/wiremock-standalone-2.5.0.jar --https-port=8082 --verbose --root-dir ~/github/vapi-express/wiremock

Run the server

Start the Express web app:

$ npm start

Finally, browse to localhost:3000 to view the login page.

How it works

This simple two-page web application illustrates how to authenticate to the vSphere REST API endpoint and make subsequent calls to the API to return information from a vCenter server instance. The home page is a login page and upon successful authentication displays an inventory (/inventory) page which renders the results of an vSphere REST API call. By default the application displays a list of the hosts from the /rest/vcenter/host API. The inventory page also accepts a "path" query parameter to call other API's (ex. /?path=/rest/vcenter/datastore). The application as written only supports HTTP GET calls to the REST API meaning it's read-only.

Requirements

npm packages used in this example:

"dependencies": {
    "express": "^4.13.4",
    "clarity-ui": "^0.10.0",
    "pug": "^2.0.0-rc.3",
    "request": "^2.72.0",
    "body-parser": "^1.15.1",
    "dotenv": "^2.0.0"
},

Using Clarity CSS

The app includes a base template to render the site using the CSS from VMware's Clarity Design System however is not a full clarity-seed application and does not require Angular.