For all these examples, VMware VI SDK 2.0/2.5 is assumed to be installed. Basically, version 2.5 provides some extra features for which you may check the relevant SDK manual.
As mentioned in the first post about using VMware APIs to perform operations on the ESX Server, the ESX 3.0, 3.5 and 3i services are basically exposed as a web service defined in in one WSDL file – vim.wsdl (all names are suffixed with “25” for the VI SDK 2.5 version). This file contains the format and definition of the services provided by the ESX Server. In order to use these services from a Java client, we need to first generate the stubs from the WSDL file, compile those generated files and then bundle those classes into a JAR. These steps are demonstrated as follows:
1. Generate the stubs from the WSDL file.
> java -Xms256M -Xmx256M -classpath “./;./lib/axis.jar;./lib/axis-ant.jar;./lib/commons-discovery-0.2.jar;./lib/commons-logging.jar;./lib/jaxrpc.jar;./lib/log4j.jar;./lib/saaj.jar;./lib/wsdl4j-1.5.1.jar;./lib/vim.jar;./lib/javamail-2002-08-28.jar;./lib/activation.jar;” org.apache.axis.wsdl.WSDL2Java -w -O-1 -Nurn:vimService=com.vmware.vim -Nurn:vim2=com.vmware.vim -o. “./vim.wsdl”
Note: Here, the current directory is assumed to be the one where the WSDL file resides. As can be seen by the notation, ‘lib’ is a sub-directory where all the requisite JAR files (for the generation of the VI SDK specific jar(s)) reside. Also note the use of the open source Apache Axis Client used to convert the WSDL definition into Java classes, specifically the WSDL2Java class. This is unbelievably convenient if one desires to generate the latest JARs instead of relying on the pre-generated JAR files in the VI SDK.
2. Compile the stubs into classes:
> javac -J-Xmx128M -classpath “./;./lib/axis.jar;./lib/axis-ant.jar;./lib/commons-discovery-0.2.jar;./lib/commons-logging.jar;./lib/jaxrpc.jar;./lib/log4j.jar;./lib/saaj.jar;./lib/wsdl4j-1.5.1.jar;./lib/vim.jar;./lib/javamail-2002-08-28.jar;./lib/activation.jar;” com\vmware\vim\*.java
Note: The package structure can be clearly seen in the command above – com.vmware.vim. This is the general package structure for the VI SDK API classes.
3. Generate the vim.jar (or vim25.jar) file:
> jar cf ./vim.jar com\vmware\vim\*.class
Note: This bundles all the required class files into a convenient vim.jar file. The most important point to note here is that even after generating the vim.jar (or vim25.jar depending on whether you are using the VI SDK version 2.0 or 2.5), all these JARs are still required to be in the classpath of the application:
axis.jar, axis-ant.jar, commons-discovery-0.2.jar, commons-logging.jar, jaxrpc.jar, log4j.jar, saaj.jar, wsdl4j-1.5.1.jar, javamail-2002-08-28.jar
So there you go – these three simple steps (which can be automated in a simple script) are all you need to get your hands on the tools to start hacking on your ESX Server.
In the next tutorial, we’ll take our first baby steps into actual usage of the APIs and a bit of theoretical explanation is also in the offing.
Peace!
Talking with a Lisp 