Which way to go: vCO Webview or Web Services

[Dirty_Hipster]

Hi Folks,

I have a general question or discussion regarding the extended usage of vCenter Orchestrator, as a web application.

We'd like to provision servers using vCO with user web inputs engaged, so we deployed a vCO Webview like this:

The user interaction will trigger the workflow in vCO, and for this part of the job, everything is perfect.

Now, we are greedy and want to further customize this request portal, with the following 2 features:

1, DB:

We'd like to put the user's inputs as an object in our SQL database, and next time when the same user logged back in, he will be able to see his historical requests.And also be able to find out the processing status of his request. For this part, I know it will frequently talk to the DB to read and write and present the data on the Webview.

2, Key up:

We'd like to write some JQuery key up functions associated with each input field, when the user input something, the related price will show up, so the user will know instantly how much it is going to be charged if he selects 2 CPU, 4G RAM and 100G Storage.

To continue using the Webview, there seems no obvious places for me to place the customization codes. Or is it the time to switch to Web Services?

We just want to know how far we can go with Webview before we make the shift.

Any insights or use cases on this issue will be much appreciated.

Thanks

[Burke-]

I highly recommend going the route of Web Services Webviews were a nice quick solution as they offered minimal customization capabilities... However, they are not maintained or updated the way the REST web service is.

[tschoergez · Accepted solution]

Nice use cases! (Good to hear that your are getting "greedy 🙂

My recommendation: Do not try to customize the webviews anymore. They are quite outdated technology, with an "uncertain" future.

Better use vCO's REST API (http://your-vco-server:8281/api/docs) and build your own webapp on top of it, then you can use whatever modern client UI library you want.

It might be a bit more effort at the beginning (ok, it is quite a mess to try-and-error customizing webview anyway), but you have the best flexibility.

You can also use a tool like wavemaker to build the frontend (google for vco and wavemaker for some nice showcases)...

Cheers,

Joerg

[Dirty_Hipster]

I figured the same, webview seems to use DOJO for some javascript functions which I donot have access to.

Thanks

[Dirty_Hipster]

You are absolutely right, webview's functionalities are really limited compared to REST API and web services which is the right way we should go.

Thanks