A view is a client-side Perl object populated with the state of one or more server-side managed objects by the vSphere SDK for Perl.
A view object has the following characteristic.
- Is a static copy of a server-side managed object and includes properties and methods that correspond to the properties and operations of the server-side managed object.
- Must be explicitly updated when the object on the server changes. See Updating View Objects.
- Has properties that correspond to properties of server-side managed objects as follows.
- For each simple property (string, Boolean, numeric data type), including inherited simple properties, the SDK creates an accessor method. The accessor method name is the same as the property name.
- Arrays of properties become arrays of properties of the same name.
- Includes the following methods.
- An accessor method for each managed object property. The vSphere SDK for Perl provides accessors for any property, regardless of its depth inside a composite object structure.
- A blocking and a non-blocking method for each (non-blocking) operation provided by the server-side managed object. See Non-Blocking and Blocking Methods.
- A method that updates the state of any client-side view object with current data from the server. See Updating View Objects.
The vSphere SDK for Perl simplifies programming as follows.
- Provides a _this parameter to reference the object on which a method is run, if needed.
- Allows you to pass a view object as a parameter to methods that take managed object references as required parameter. The SDK converts the view object to the corresponding managed object.
