Searches the inventory tree for managed objects that match the specified entity type.
To avoid performance problems, use this command with a filter or specify the properties argument. By default, this subroutine retrieves all properties of an entity. See Creating and Using Filters and Filtering Views Selectively Using Properties.
See the vSphere SDK for Perl API Reference for a list of properties. You can specify properties inherited from ManagedEntity or local to a specific entity type.
Parameters
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| view_type | Managed entity type specified as one of these strings.
|
| begin_entity (optional) | Managed object reference that specifies the starting point for search in the inventory. This parameter helps you narrow the scope. |
| filter (optional) | Hash of one or more name-value pairs. The name represents the property value to test and the value represents a pattern that the property must match. If more than one pair is specified, all the patterns must match. |
| properties | Properties to retrieve. Default is all properties. Use a filter or properties to avoid performance problems. See Filtering Views Selectively Using Properties. |
Returns
Reference to an array of view objects containing static copies of property values for the matching inventory objects. If no matching entities are found, the array is empty.
Example
The following example, originally published in VMware Communities in post #1272780, retrieves the name property from each inventory object. Note that $entity_views extracted from the server-side managed object is an array reference, not a scalar.
...
my %opts = (
entity => {
type => "=s",
variable => "VI_ENTITY",
help => "ManagedEntity type: HostSystem, etc",
required => 1, },
);
Opts::add_options(%opts);
Opts::parse();
Opts::validate();
Util::connect();
# Obtain all inventory objects of the specified type
my $entity_type = Opts::get_option('entity');
my $entity_views = Vim::find_entity_views();
view_type => $entity_type,
properties => [ 'name' ]);
...
