pyVmomi - Example of CustomFieldsManager.SetField please?

[tbarn]

I can't for the life of me get this method to work, as per the SDK and Github documentation I should be able to call it like such "vim.CustomFieldsManager(myVMRef, intKeyOfCustomField, strValueToPutThere)" but it refuses to accept those arguments, the closest I can get is when I put the VM's reference in twice (making four arguments, ie ref,ref,key,value) and this time it bombed differently with an "The request refers to an unexpected or unknown type."


 

[stumpr]

It should be more like the following (not tested, just working off the top of my head)

customFieldsManager = si.RetrieveContent().customFieldsManager

customFieldsManager.SetField(entity=myVM, key=intKeyOfCustomField ,value=strValueToPutThere)

[tbarn]

Thank you for the response stumpr, I can confirm the successful way to reach the CustomFieldsManager is via the vim reference but when I tried feeding it the arguments like you suggest it returns the following error instead:


TypeError:  _InvokeMethod() takes at least 2 non-keyword arguments (1 given)


 


I've even tried juggling the values around in various combos but it always gives an error along those lines or a mismatch in type.

[stumpr]

Just drop down to the object then and use the setCustomValue method.  I'll fire up my VCSIM and validate it as well.

myVM.setCustomValue(key=myFieldDefKey, value=myStringValue)

[tbarn]

Oh that's fantastic I didn't realize that method existed and yes it worked great 🙂  for anyone else trying this the key it wants is actually a string of the CustomField's name which actually resolves something else I was trying to do which was poll the CustomFieldManager.field array to get the key->name pairs to so I could do this.  Now I don't even need to do that, which is nice because that doesn't seem to work either.


Thank you stumpr

[stumpr]

It worked but I used the field name, not the key value:

>>> cfm.field

(vim.CustomFieldsManager.FieldDef) [

   (vim.CustomFieldsManager.FieldDef) {

      dynamicType = <unset>,

      dynamicProperty = (vmodl.DynamicProperty) [],

      key = 1,

      name = 'FieldTest',

      type = str,

      managedObjectType = vim.VirtualMachine,

      fieldDefPrivileges = <unset>,

      fieldInstancePrivileges = <unset>

   }

]

>>> vm.setCustomValue(key='FieldTest', value='ValueTest')

>>> vm.customValue

(vim.CustomFieldsManager.Value) [

   (vim.CustomFieldsManager.StringValue) {

      dynamicType = <unset>,

      dynamicProperty = (vmodl.DynamicProperty) [],

      key = 1,

      value = 'ValueTest'

   }

]

[stumpr]

Jinx

By the way, the customFieldsManager.SetField call worked as well, I think pyvmomi just prefers the actual object (it'll extract the _moId value from it):

>>> cfm.SetField(entity=vm, key=1, value='ValueTest2')

>>> vm.customValue

(vim.CustomFieldsManager.Value) [

   (vim.CustomFieldsManager.StringValue) {

      dynamicType = <unset>,

      dynamicProperty = (vmodl.DynamicProperty) [],

      key = 1,

      value = 'ValueTest2'

   }

]