Catalogs that have external subscriptions are synchronized with their external sources by a background process that the system administrator controls. You can also force synchronization of individual catalog items or entire catalogs at any time.

Prerequisites

This operation requires the rights included in the predefined Catalog Author role or an equivalent set of rights. Verify that you are logged in to the vCloud Air Compute Service as a Virtual Infrastructure Administrator.

Procedure

  1. Retrieve the XML representation of a catalog that has an external subscription.
    Use a request like this one: 
    GET https://vcloud.example.com/api/catalog/32
  2. Examine the Catalog element to find the CatalogItem elements that it contains.
  3. Examine the Catalog and CatalogItem element to find the sync links that they contain.
    In catalogs, these links have the following form: 
    <Link
   rel="sync"
   href="https://vcloud.example.com/api/catalog/id/action/sync" />
    In catalog items, these links have the following form: 
    <Link
   rel="sync"
   href="https://vcloud.example.com/api/catalogItem/id/action/sync" />
  4. Synchronize the catalog or catalog item.
    Make a POST request to the appropriate action/sync link.
    Option Description
    Synchronize a Catalog Make a POST request to the action/sync link in the Catalog element.
    Synchronize a Catalog Item Make a POST request to the action/sync link in the CatalogItem element.

Example: Synchronize a Catalog Item

This request synchronizes a single catalog item. The response is a task that tracks the progress of the synchronization.

Request: 
POST https://vcloud.example.com/api/catalogItem/102/action/sync
Response: 
202 Accepted
Content-Type: application/vnd.vmware.vcloud.task+xml
...
<Task ... operation="Synchronizing Catalog Item DB.iso (102)" ...>
...
</Task>