Web Server Session Token

As with other Web services, the vSphere Web service maintains session state for each client connection by using a token in the HTTP header to identify the session. The vSphere server returns a session token to the client in its response to the client connection request. Subsequent messages between client and server automatically include the token.

Each of the stand-alone samples in the SDK\vsphere-ws\java\JAX-WS\samples\com\vmware\ uses the JAX-WS TrustAllTrustCertificates class, as discussed in Obtaining a Session Token - Code Fragments from VMPromoteDisks.java to ignore certificates, obtain a session token, and then connect to the server.

Caution: We do not recommend that you trust all certificates in a production environment. Instead, you can look at the sample code to see how the JAX-WS libraries are used when making the connection, but set up an SSL policy that allows connection only with trusted certificates.

The logic for getting a cookie and putting it in the header looks like this:

//cookie logic
List cookies = (List) headers.get("Set-cookie");
cookieValue = (String) cookies.get(0);
StringTokenizer tokenizer = new StringTokenizer(cookieValue, ";");
cookieValue = tokenizer.nextToken();
String path = "$" + tokenizer.nextToken();
String cookie = "$Version=\"1\"; " + cookieValue + "; " + path;

// set the cookie in the new request header
Map map = new HashMap();
map.put("Cookie", Collections.singletonList(cookie));

((BindingProvider) vimPort).getRequestContext().put(
MessageContext.HTTP_REQUEST_HEADERS, map);