Virtual Infrastructure Inventory View APIs

The InventoryView managed object provides a means of browsing the inventory and tracking changes to open folders.

This managed object is particularly useful for UI clients that display a tree-based navigation panel of the inventory.

InventoryView maintains the view list of managed object references to inventory objects. When you create an inventory view (CreateInventoryView), the server initializes the view's object list with a single folder - the root folder.

InventoryView provides methods to open and close folders in the inventory. Use these methods to add and subtract objects from the view list. Use the InventoryView together with the PropertyCollector to manage the data resulting from OpenInventoryViewFolder and CloseInventoryViewFolder methods. By using the PropertyCollector, you have access to the modifications to the view, rather than processing the entire view list.

For example, you might use the following sequence of operations with an InventoryView and the PropertyCollector:

1. Create an InventoryView.
2. Create a filter specification for the PropertyCollector.
   • Use the InventoryView as the starting object in the ObjectSpec for the filter.
   • Use a set of TraversalSpec data objects to identify paths in possible inventory configurations.
   • Use the PropertySpec to identify object properties for retrieval.
3. Use either the CheckForUpdates or WaitForUpdates method to obtain InventoryView modifications. Both methods return an UpdateSet object that describes the changes returned by the PropertyCollector.
4. Call the OpenInventoryViewFolder or method.