Creating plugins for vSphere using HTML Client SDK Fling

According to Lewis Carroll, “If you don’t know where to go, you'll still wander around in circles.” However, if your direction is to use the new HTML- based vSphere Client, and you also need to create plugins for it, then your path is to the HTML Client SDK Fling, a product announced in August of this year.



The HTML SDK Fling includes libraries, sample plug-ins, documentation, and various tools to help you design and create extensions compatible with the vSphere Client (HTML5) and the vSphere Web Client (Flex).

HTML Client SDK Fling relies on the existing HTML Bridge API , which allows you to fully support the functionality of the HTML Bridge in the new vSphere Client (HTML5). You can use the HTML Client SDK Fling to extend existing HTML Bridge plug-ins or create HTML5 plug-ins from scratch and check them in the vSphere Client (HTML5).

Since the HTML Client SDK supports both the old version of the vSphere Flex and the new version of the HTML vSphere client, there is no reason not to start already creating your vSphere HTML plugin or not translating your existing Flex plugin into HTML using the HTML Client SDK. Extension tools for Flex and HTML clients are provided as part of the SDK. Here are some noteworthy points.
')

Fling Documentation

For the HTML SDK Fling, a detailed manual “Getting Started with an HTML Client SDK Fling” has been created, which can be found in the SDK Docs folder.

This document contains requirements and instructions for quickly configuring the HTML SDK, instructions for registering the vCenter Server, creating and running samples, and many more details that will help in creating the vSphere HTML Client Plugin. If you already have a plugin created from the existing HTML Bridge API, you should pay particular attention to the compatibility indicators of HTML plugins.

Running HTML templates on HTML Client Fling

The sample folder contains search codes for four templates (chassisA, chassisB, globalview-html , vsphere-wssdk ), providing examples of windows, tabs, actions, object lists, and other user interface elements. They can be deployed to vSphere HTML Client Fling.

Other tools

There are several scripts for creating project templates from the command line. The scripts are available with ... \ html-client-sdk \ tools \ Plugin generation scripts ”, they are called create-html-plugin .sh for Mac and with reate-html-plugin .bat for Windows. There are also new scripts to create an archive of plug-ins; These are the build-plugin-package .sh for Mac and build-plugin-package .bat for Windows scripts, the plug-ins will be called pluginName-ui and pluginName-service respectively .

Instead of conclusion

Since no changes to the API are planned for the near future, the HTML SDK team plans to continue to create various tools, tutorials and templates. The Fling release guarantees the necessary interactivity until the release of the HTML SDK as part of the existing vSphere Web Client SDK.