vSphere SDK for Perl Programming Guide - Documentation - VMware

Returns
Chapter 4 vSphere SDK for Perl Subroutine Reference
Reference to an array of view objects containing static copies of property values for the matching inventory
objects. If no matching entities are found, the array is empty.
Example
The following example, originally published in VMware Communities in post #1272780, retrieves the name
property from each inventory object. Note that $entity_views extracted from the server‐side managed object
is an array reference, not a scalar.
...
my %opts = (
entity => {
type => "=s",
variable => "VI_ENTITY",
help => "ManagedEntity type: HostSystem, etc",
required => 1, },
);
Opts::add_options(%opts);
Opts::parse();
Opts::validate();
Util::connect();
# Obtain all inventory objects of the specified type
my $entity_type = Opts::get_option('entity');
my $entity_views = Vim::find_entity_views();
view_type => $entity_type,
properties => [ 'name' ]);
...
get_service_instance
Retrieves a ServiceInstance object, which can be used to query the server time or to retrieve the
ServiceContent object.
Parameters
No parameters.
Returns
Returns a ServiceInstance object.
get_service_content
Retrieves properties of the service instance enabling access to the managed objects of the service. Alternatively,
you can use get_views(), get_view(), and other subroutines to access the objects more directly. If you start
with the service content to work with the Web service, you can navigate to the object of interest.
Parameters
No parameters.
Returns
Reference to ServiceContent object, which contains managed object references to all inventory content,
including the root folder.
VMware, Inc. 47