article Dynamic Types plug-in generator package in VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator Documents

Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 10:42:06 GMT

The plug-in generator package is a set of wizard and template workflows allowing to create a plug-in without doing any scripting.

Read more about Dynamic Types in this article.

To familiarize yourself with creating a Dynamic Types plug-in V2 you can follow this tutorial and/or this tutorial.

Requires:

vCO 5.5.1 build 1617131 (vCO 5.5 U1 released with vSphere 5.5 U1) or greater.
DynamicTypes plug-in build 166032 or later

Download the plug-in generator version 2 from sample exchange (Since November 2, 2016 since the package was moved from Flowgrab)

Handle REST APIs with JSON or XML message formats.

- Wizard based workflow to create a plug-in inventory handling
- Multiple hosts *
- Multiple levels of objects *
- Caching to avoid repeating requests *
- Requires a single URL per object to implement findRelation, findAll, findById *
- Get object properties using
  - Simple properties: JavaScript like doted syntax
  - Complex properties: JSONSelect (By Lloyd Hilaiel) *
  - Complex properties with high performance: pluggable actions
- Wizard based workflow to create and invoke object methods that are wrappable into plug-in workflows *
- Export plug-in to a end user installable package including runtime

* New functionality of version 2

Special thanks to Brandon Saxe for integrating JSONSelect in Orchestrator.

Disclaimer: These samples workflows are provided AS IS and are not considered production quality and are not officially supported. Use at your own risk.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Fri, 09 May 2014 14:15:55 GMT

Updated to reflect changes in DynamicTypes plug-in build 166032.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 17:30:08 GMT

Updated the v2 package to fix cache, deserialization, presentation bugs.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

willonit — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 17:46:41 GMT

Would you consider posting these on flow grab? It would make versioning, sharing, branching and downloading much easier.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 19:37:33 GMT

It is done.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 18:27:53 GMT

Since V2 is still under active development it is now linked on flowgrab.com

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

kamsz — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 08:53:52 GMT

Is it typical that presentation of the plugin is working very, very slow? Sometimes I've to wait several minutes to be able to type anything inside of the text box.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

pizzle85 — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 14:39:37 GMT

In v1 we were able to select the action that executed the relation URLs. Is this available in v2? For instance with Veeam its required that i first post to /sessionmngr before i can execute anything else in the Rest API. In v1 i was able so simply copy the default execute action and add in an extra line for that POST and call my custom execute action without modifying the base execute action that comes with the package.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:16:14 GMT

On my system it ranges from 20 to 30 seconds. If you run on shared demo environments I have seen up to 2 min 30 seconds.

The issue is related to the way vCO client handle dependencies of input fields that are set based on other fields.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:22:40 GMT

Using a custom action is not yet available. I realize some REST APIs require to do custom requests so I will add a way to override the default action with a custom action for a given rest host.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

pizzle85 — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:46:45 GMT

I'm attempting to configure the Find By ID object. In the URL field I am entering /jobs/{ID} which will return the object with the matching ID. This displays the correct content in the Response field in the workflow presentation but it throws an error stating, "[findById URL], URL contain unknown type id". Again everything appears to be working correctly, I can click next and move on with the accessors which also are all displayed properly, but because its throwing the error i cannot submit the workflow. I've read through the tutorial linked above but it skips the Find All and Find By ID sections. Before i go messing with the presentation validation is this what i'm supposed to be doing in this section?

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

pizzle85 — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:53:55 GMT

FWIW, I went through this same process with the same configs in v1 with no issues.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 17:01:30 GMT

Try /jobs/{job} (or replace job with the name of your type name)

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

pizzle85 — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 17:56:05 GMT

/jobs/{job} which is the name of my type, worked fine.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 21:47:12 GMT

I have uploaded a new version of the V2 package allowing to associate a custom action with a REST with the "Set a custom request action for a host" workflow. This should address custom headers / custom requests requirements.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

pizzle85 — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 16:12:24 GMT

After upgrading from .17 to .18 Plugin gen -1- Install plug-in reports 5 validation errors.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 17:00:35 GMT

Install plug-in references 5 resource elements that are deleted once you run it.

These validation errors should go away once you follow the process to install a plug-in : Install a DT plug-in package. You can try with the NSX one.

Maybe I should empty the content of the resource element instead of deleting them to avoid this.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

pizzle85 — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 19:23:46 GMT

Im not sure im doing this right but heres what ive tried... I looked throguh your script and found the action that appears to execute my API calls "com.vmware.coe.dynamicTypes.pluginGenerator.presentation.executeRequestJsonText" and cloned it to a new action where i added my custom API session calls. I ran the workflow "Set a custom action for a host" and selected the only rest host i have, which was created by the workflow "Plugin gen -2- Add new host", and selected my cloned action. If i look at the custom properties of the rest host i see the custom property "customRequestAction" and its set to the value of my cloned action. When i run "Plugin get -3- Create a type" when on the find relation page i get a 401 HTTP response stating that the session is not valid which is the result of not including the session header that i added in my cloned action. If i add the custom API session call directly to "...executeRequestJsonText" and run "...Create a type" i get the expected response. It appears that the create a type workflow is not picking up the custom property on my rest host that defines my custom execution action.

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

cdecanini_ — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 20:25:02 GMT

The only action that execute requests is executeRequestJson (executeRequestJsonText use it as well).

I added this in the action:

var customRequestAction = Server.getCustomProperty(restHost, "customRequestAction");

if (customRequestAction != null) {

eval('var objectsProperties = System.getModule("' + customRequestAction.module.name + '").' + customRequestAction.name + "(restHost, method, url, params, content, contentType);");

return objectsProperties;

}

Which gets the custom property value and execute the action.

With duplicating executeRequestjson (and removing thee lines to avoid infinite loop), adding a throw "stop" at the start I cannot run a single query on the host including the ones during Create a type workflow.

Please double check that the action is not executed adding a throw and double check if you have the lines I pasted in your executeRequestJson

Re: Dynamic Types plug-in generator package

pizzle85 — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 13:21:20 GMT

It looks like while i was working with v1 i modified the executeRequestJson action to test out adding my custom headers and it automatically added a new version. When i tried to import yours from v2 .18 it was not imported because a newer version existed. I removed the action and re-imported it and I now see the additional code. I was able to copy the action, comment out those 5 lines, and add my custom header in the action and its running as expected now. Thanks!