vSphere SDK for Perl Programming Conventions

Several programming conventions are different than you might expect because the SDK interacts with a server using SOAP/WSDL.

• Boolean data types – SDK applications send and receive Boolean values as follows.
  • Input (sending from the client application):

    false:	Use 0, '0', or 'false' (capitalization ignored)
    true:	Use 1, '1', or 'true' (capitalization ignored)

  • Output (receiving from the server):

    false:	Return value is 0
    true:	Return value is 1

To match Boolean values in a filter, use the strings true and false. See Creating and Using Filters.

• Date/Time – The server returns a SOAP dateTime value. You can use the Date::Parse Perl module to process these objects.

  The vSphere SDK for Perl accepts only native SOAP dateTime values using standard date time format with or without fractional seconds, and with or without GMT (Z) time zone.

  YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD, for example, 1997-07-16T19:20:30+01:00
  YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD, for example, 1997-07-16T19:20:30.45+01:00

  The SDK always returns dateTime values in the standard date time format.

• SOAP error message – Most likely indicates an error on the server, not an error with the communication to the server.