Outlining a Client for the JSON Protocol

A client to work with the JSON protocol generally contains the following parts, at minimum.

• The basic elements of the URL, including the address of the vCenter Server instance, the service endpoint specifier, and the version specifier.
• The credentials with which you authenticate your client session.
• Code to GET managed object properties, such as the ServiceInstance content, which contains managed object references to singletons, including the SessionManager.
• Code to POST requests that invoke methods on managed objects, such as LoginByToken.
• A request to fetch the ServiceInstance content and extract the SessionManager managed object reference.
• A request to authenticate the client session with SessionManager.
• A request to end the client session.

Following sections use fragments of Python code to show how you can build these parts of the request.