How do i filter using a partial VM name (string) in vmware vSphere client REST API? - vsphere

Question

Good day!
i am trying to automate some actions to be done to VM's in my organisation.
The action to be done depends on the a substring in the VM name.
for eg, i would need to delete all VM's whose name starts with 'delete', etc.
I can use the below API to fetch the list of VM's:
GET https://{{vc}}/rest/vcenter/vm
However, this API can only fetch a maximum of 1000 VM's.
Is there any way i can filter and get only the list of VM's with the expected substring from this API?
from what i understand, appending filter.names.1 to the above API works but for that i need to input the exact and entire VM name.
is there a way where i can search for a list of VM's with partial text?
Apologies, i am a newbie to this.
thank you for your time!

Answer 1

Since vSphere API does not provide such capability to search by partial VM name there is a tricky way to do this.
I am using the search functionality in vSphere Client 6.7.0.
Prerequisite is to get the following cookies first:
VSPHERE-USERNAME
VSPHERE-CLIENT-SESSION-INDEX
VSPHERE-UI-JSESSIONID
You have to do three calls in order to get them:
1. GET "https://[URL]/ui/login" you will be forwarded to a new URL from where you can take "SAMLRequest token"
2. POST "https://[URL]/websso/SAML2/SSO/vsphere.local?SAMLRequest=[SAMLRequest token]", set as header "CastleAuthorization=Basic%20[credentials]" where credentials is the Base64 encoding of "User:Password". Get the value of "SAMLResponse" hidden field from the response.
3. POST "https://[URL]/ui/saml/websso/sso", set "SAMLResponse=[SAMLResponse value]", where "SAMLResponse value" you have it from the previous response. From this response you will get the cookies.
Once you have those three cookies, make a new call as you set the cookies
4. GET "https://[URL]/ui/search/quicksearch/?opId=0&query=[partial VM name]"
For example for this call "https://[URL]/ui/search/quicksearch/?opId=0&query=test"
you will get response like this:
[{
"icon": "vsphere-icon-vm",
"labelPlural": "Virtual Machines",
"label": "Virtual Machine",
"results": [{
"id": "urn:vmomi:VirtualMachine:vm-2153:103ac083-e314-47ea-942a-c685d9a4e6c9",
"type": "VirtualMachine",
"name": "TestVM1"
}, {
"id": "urn:vmomi:VirtualMachine:vm-3391:103ac083-e314-47ea-942a-c685d9a4e6c9",
"type": "VirtualMachine",
"name": "TestVM2"
}, {
"id": "urn:vmomi:VirtualMachine:vm-3438:103ac083-e314-47ea-942a-c685d9a4e6c9",
"type": "VirtualMachine",
"name": "TestVM3"
}
]
}
]
Below is my own vSphere Search Proxy Client written in C#:
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Text;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Web;
namespace VsphereSearchProxy
{
static class Program
{
const string VSPHERE_URL = "VSPHERE_URL";
static string VSPHERE_CRED_BASE64
{
get
{
var plainTextCred = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("USER:PASS");
return Convert.ToBase64String(plainTextCred);
}
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
if (args.Length == 0)
{
Console.WriteLine("Expected one argument: Virtual Machine name");
return;
}
var vmName = args[0];
var vsphereUri = VSPHERE_URL.TrimEnd('/');
ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback = delegate { return true; };
ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol = SecurityProtocolType.Tls12;
ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = true;
//=================================================================
Console.WriteLine("\nStep 1\n");
var url1 = vsphereUri + "/ui/login";
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url1);
request.Method = "GET";
request.KeepAlive = true;
request.AllowAutoRedirect = true;
var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
var url2 = response.ResponseUri.AbsoluteUri;
Console.WriteLine("url2: " + url2);
WebHeaderCollection headerCollection = response.Headers;
Console.WriteLine("\nResponse headers\n");
for (int i = 0; i < headerCollection.Count; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine("\t" + headerCollection.GetKey(i) + " = " + headerCollection.Get(i));
}
//=================================================================
Console.WriteLine("\nStep 2\n");
request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url2);
request.Method = "POST";
request.Headers.Add("Authorization: Basic " + VSPHERE_CRED_BASE64);
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
request.KeepAlive = true;
request.AllowAutoRedirect = false;
using (var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream()))
{
streamWriter.Write("CastleAuthorization=Basic%20" + VSPHERE_CRED_BASE64);
streamWriter.Flush();
streamWriter.Close();
}
response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
if (response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK)
{
throw new Exception("Expected 200 OK, but got " + response.StatusCode);
}
headerCollection = response.Headers;
Console.WriteLine("\nResponse headers\n");
for (int i = 0; i < headerCollection.Count; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine("\t" + headerCollection.GetKey(i) + " = " + headerCollection.Get(i));
}
var responseString = "";
using (Stream stream = response.GetResponseStream())
{
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream, Encoding.UTF8);
responseString = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
var SAMLResponse = "";
Match match = Regex.Match(responseString, "<input[^>]*type=\"hidden\"\\s+name=\"SAMLResponse\"[^>]*value=\"([^\"]*)\"");
if (match.Success)
{
SAMLResponse = match.Groups[1].Value;
SAMLResponse = SAMLResponse.Replace("\n", "");
//Console.WriteLine("SAMLResponse: " + SAMLResponse);
}
if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(SAMLResponse))
{
throw new Exception("SAMLResponse is missing or blank");
}
//=================================================================
Console.WriteLine("\nStep 3\n");
var url3 = vsphereUri + "/ui/saml/websso/sso";
request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url3);
request.Method = "POST";
request.Headers.Add("Authorization: Basic " + VSPHERE_CRED_BASE64);
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
request.KeepAlive = true;
request.AllowAutoRedirect = false;
using (var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream()))
{
streamWriter.Write("SAMLResponse=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(SAMLResponse));
streamWriter.Flush();
streamWriter.Close();
}
response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
var cookies = response.Headers["Set-Cookie"];
Console.WriteLine("cookies: " + cookies);
headerCollection = response.Headers;
Console.WriteLine("\nResponse headers\n");
for (int i = 0; i < headerCollection.Count; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine("\t" + headerCollection.GetKey(i) + " = " + headerCollection.Get(i));
}
//=================================================================
Console.WriteLine("\nStep 4\n");
var url4 = vsphereUri + "/ui/search/quicksearch/?opId=:1&query=" + vmName;
request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url4);
request.Method = "GET";
request.Headers.Add("Cookie: " + cookies);
request.KeepAlive = true;
request.AllowAutoRedirect = false;
response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
if (response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK)
{
throw new Exception("Expected 200 OK, but got " + response.StatusCode);
}
var jsonResp = "";
using (Stream stream = response.GetResponseStream())
{
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream, Encoding.UTF8);
jsonResp = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
Console.WriteLine(jsonResp);
}
}
}

Answer 2

Unfortunately the vSphere Automation API isn't setup to filter on partial names or even when using a wildcard. Some of the available filters may help you limit the output to be under the 1000 object limit (example: filter on specific clusters and/or folders).
Hopefully this is something that's added in a future release.