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Content Library API Samples

The Content Library is a core component that is part of the vCenter Server. It is a new addition to the vSphere 6.0 release.

The API samples published here are accompanied by the blogs published by the Content Library Team, which explain the use of Content Library APIs and various concepts introduced by the Content Library Service.

This document will go through the steps required:

• to quickly run a Content Library API sample
• to setup a development environment to facilitate development and exploration using the Content Library APIs

Prerequisites

Following instructions are for the Mac OS X, but are applicable to other platforms as well (with minimal platform specific changes).

Required

• VMware vCenter Server 6.0 installed.
• VMware vCloud Suite SDK 6.0 for Java downloaded and extracted to a local directory.
  These samples are based on the following version of the SDK.

  VMware-vCloud-Suite-SDK-Java-6.0.0-2561089.zip
  File size:55 MB
  File type:zip
  Release Date:2015-03-12
  Build Number:2561089

• a JDK (>=1.7).
• The environment variable JAVA_HOME must be defined.
  

  $ export JAVA_HOME="/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_76.jdk/Contents/Home"

Optional

• git - good to have, but even otherwise you can download the source-code directly.

For the impatient

Getting the source code for Content Library API Samples and building it

• You can get the sample code by cloning this repository, or by downloading the sources directly.
  

  $ mkdir ~/my-projects
  $ cd ~/my-projects
  $ git clone https://github.com/vmware/content-library-api-samples.git
  $ cd content-library-api-samples

• We need the libraries from the SDK to build the source code. Let's assume that the SDK is downloaded in ~/Downloads directory. The extracted contents will be placed in VMware-vCloud-Suite-SDK-Java directory by default.
  

  $ cd ~/Downloads
  $ unzip VMware-vCloud-Suite-SDK-Java-6.0.0-2561089.zip

• Let's copy the libraries from the directory where we have extracted the SDK.
  

  $ cp -r ~/Downloads/VMware-vCloud-Suite-SDK-Java/client/lib ~/my-projects/content-library-api-samples

• Let's build the samples and run the executor script generated by gradle.
  The code samples use gradle for its build system.
  You don't need gradle to be installed since gradlew does it for you.
  

  $ cd ~/my-projects/content-library-api-samples
  $ ./gradlew installApp

Running a simple Content Library API Sample

• Let's run the generated executor script which is configured to run the sample from LibraryCount.java.
  This sample connects to the provided vCenter Server instance, and lists the number of content libraries available in that instance.

  $ cd ~/my-projects/content-library-api-samples
  $ ./build/install/content-library-api-samples/bin/content-library-api-samples
  Enter the hostname/IP for the vCenter SSO Server: vcenter.example.com
  Enter SSO username: administrator@vsphere.local
  Enter SSO password:
  The number of libraries in this system is: 0
  $

• Congratulations! You just ran a very basic Content Library API sample successfully!
  Head over to the Development Setup section if you want to get your hands dirty.

• To run other samples, use of an IDE is recommended. However, following is an option to run those directly from the command line
  

  $ cd ~/my-projects/content-library-api-samples
  $ java -cp "./build/libs/content-library-api-samples-1.0.jar:lib/*" com.vmware.content.samples.LibraryCount
  Enter the hostname/IP for the vCenter SSO Server: vcenter.example.com
  Enter SSO username: administrator@vsphere.local
  Enter SSO password:
  The number of libraries in this system is: 0
  
  

All samples have a `main` method, and reside in the [com.vmware.content.samples](src/main/java/com/vmware/content/samples/) package in this repository.
To run any sample, you could use the above pattern.

$ cd ~/my-projects/content-library-api-samples
$ java -cp "./build/libs/content-library-api-samples-1.0.jar:lib/\*" com.vmware.content.samples.<SAMPLE\_CLASS\_NAME>

Development setup

Prerequisites

In addition to the requirements from the previous section, we will need:

• a decent IDE (Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, etc.).
  

This documentation is based on Eclipse, but the steps shouldn't be very different for other IDEs.

Setting up your development environment

• gradle comes with a task to generate an Eclipse project and classpath files, so we will use that to speed up the import.

  $ cd ~/my-projects/content-library-api-samples
  $ ./gradlew eclipse

This will generate the project configuration files for Eclipse in the same directory.

• Launch your Eclipse and import the content-library-api-samples directory as an Eclipse project.

• Once imported, your workspace should look like this:
  

Running the Content Library API samples

• To run the sample of your choice, select and right click on the API sample in the Project Explorer view, and choose Run As > Java Application from the context menu.

Using Content Library APIs

• This setup is what you need to make use of the Content Library APIs for your requirements.
• Feel free to explore Content Library APIs on your own.
• And follow the blogs published by the Content Library Team which explain the concepts and APIs exposed by the Content Library Service.

Resources

• To be able to run the samples with ease, we have included sample ISO and OVF files to be used for uploads.
• However, these are not real ISO or OVF files. These are plain-text files and contain fake data. These are included for convenience only.
• It is recommended to use real ISO and OVF files to run the workflows and realize all the benefits exposed by the Content Library Service and VMware Virtual Infrastructure.

Sample OVF

• HTTP URL to be used when importing OVF to a library:
  http://vmware.github.io/content-library-api-samples/input/sample-ovf/descriptor.ovf (891 bytes)
• To upload OVF from a local storage to a library, please download OVF and its referenced VMDK files from following URLs in the same directory on the local storage
  • Download OVF from here (891 bytes)
  • Download VMDK for the above OVF from here (68 bytes)

Sample ISO

• HTTP URL to be used when importing ISO to a library:
  http://vmware.github.io/content-library-api-samples/input/sample-iso/only-for-demo.iso
• To upload ISO from a local storage to a library, please download the ISO file from the above URL.