vRealize Orchestrator provides a nice way to manage and interact with web services. I have always liked that you can add HTTP-REST API endpoints, configured with basic authentication, which doesn’t require a token to be requested each time they are used. It’s also quite useful having visibility of these endpoints in the inventory, which makes them easy to discover.

It’s also possible to create operations on these endpoints (i.e. all the get/post operations), but I am not a big fan of using these. The problem is that using them takes you that little bit further away from managing everything in code. They are also more difficult to port/migrate to other vRO instances, which is especially true if you have multiple environments for development, test, pre-prod, prod, etc. My much-preferred method is to use Actions which perform these operations instead.

I have also seen many other developers use Actions for their HTTP-REST operations, which is good. The problem, however, is that I have seen these written in so many different ways. I decided that I needed to create a consistent experience when interacting with these web services and created the HTTP Rest Client. This client is a class with associated methods, that are used to make requests against HTTP-REST web services.

You can download a package containing the HTTP-REST Client Action here.

HTTP REST Client

The client is an action that returns the HttpClient object. This object has several methods that can be used to execute requests against a web service. The following methods are supported:

• GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and PATCH

The Action itself requires no inputs as these are provided when instantiating the object or supplied to the methods when called.

Below is the code for the HttpClient class.

/**
 * Creates and returns an instance of the HttpClient object.
 * @author Gavin Stephens <gavin.stephens@simplygeek.co.uk>
 * @version 1.0.0
 * @function httpClient
 * @returns {*} An instance of the HttpClient object.
 */

var logType = "Action";
var logName = "httpClient"; // This must be set to the name of the action
var Logger = System.getModule("com.simplygeek.library.util").logger(logType, logName);
var log = new Logger(logType, logName);
var reqResponse = ""; //REST API request response

/**
 * Defines the HttpClient object.
 * @class
 * @param {REST:RESTHost} restHost - The HTTP REST host.
 * @param {string} [acceptType] - The encoding format to accept.
 * @returns {*} An instance of the HttpClient object.
 */

function HttpClient(restHost, acceptType) {
    this.restHost = restHost;

    if (acceptType) {
        this.acceptType = acceptType;
    } else {
        this.acceptType = "application/json";
    }

    /**
     * Defines the GET method.
     * @method
     * @param {string} restUri - The request uri.
     * @param {number[]} [expectedResponseCodes] - A list of expected response codes.
     * @param {Properties} [headers] - A key/value set of headers to include in the request.
     * @returns {*} The request response object.
     */

    this.get = function (restUri, expectedResponseCodes, headers) {
        reqResponse = this._executeRequest("GET", restUri, null, null,
                                           expectedResponseCodes, headers);

        return reqResponse;
    };

    /**
     * Defines the POST method.
     * @method
     * @param {string} restUri - The request uri.
     * @param {string} [content] - The request content.
     * @param {string} [contentType] - The encoding for content.
     * @param {number[]} [expectedResponseCodes] - A list of expected response codes.
     * @param {Properties} [headers] - A key/value set of headers to include in the request.
     * @returns {*} The request response object.
     */

    this.post = function (restUri, content, contentType,
                          expectedResponseCodes, headers) {
        if (!content) {
            content = "{}";
        }
        reqResponse = this._executeRequest("POST", restUri, content,
                                           contentType, expectedResponseCodes,
                                           headers);

        return reqResponse;
    };

    /**
     * Defines the PUT method.
     * @method
     * @param {string} restUri - The request uri.
     * @param {string} content - The request content.
     * @param {string} [contentType] - The encoding for content.
     * @param {number[]} [expectedResponseCodes] - A list of expected response codes.
     * @param {Properties} [headers] - A key/value set of headers to include in the request.
     * @returns {*} The request response object.
     */

    this.put = function (restUri, content, contentType,
                         expectedResponseCodes, headers) {
        reqResponse = this._executeRequest("PUT", restUri, content,
                                           contentType, expectedResponseCodes,
                                           headers);

        return reqResponse;
    };

    /**
     * Defines the DELETE method.
     * @method
     * @param {string} restUri - The request uri.
     * @param {string} content - The request content.
     * @param {string} [contentType] - The encoding for content.
     * @param {number[]} [expectedResponseCodes] - A list of expected response codes.
     * @param {Properties} [headers] - A key/value set of headers to include in the request.
     * @returns {*} The request response object.
     */

    this.delete = function (restUri, content, contentType,
                            expectedResponseCodes, headers) {
        reqResponse = this._executeRequest("DELETE", restUri, content,
                                           contentType, expectedResponseCodes,
                                           headers);

        return reqResponse;
    };

    /**
     * Defines the PATCH method.
     * @method
     * @param {string} restUri - The request uri.
     * @param {string} content - The request content.
     * @param {string} [contentType] - The encoding for content.
     * @param {number[]} [expectedResponseCodes] - A list of expected response codes.
     * @param {Properties} [headers] - A key/value set of headers to include in the request.
     * @returns {*} The request response object.
     */

    this.patch = function (restUri, content, contentType,
                           expectedResponseCodes, headers) {
        reqResponse = this._executeRequest("PATCH", restUri, content,
                                           contentType, expectedResponseCodes,
                                           headers);

        return reqResponse;
    };

    /**
     * A private method that executes the request.
     * @method
     * @private
     * @param {string} restMethod - The request method.
     * @param {string} restUri - The request uri.
     * @param {string} content - The request content.
     * @param {string} [contentType] - The encoding for content.
     * @param {number[]} [expectedResponseCodes] - A list of expected response codes.
     * @param {Properties} [headers] - A key/value set of headers to include in the request.
     * @returns {*} The request response object.
     */

    this._executeRequest = function (restMethod, restUri, content,
                                     contentType, expectedResponseCodes,
                                     headers) {
        var response;
        var maxAttempts = 5;
        var timeout = 10;
        var success = false;
        var statusCode;

        // Default to status code '200' if no expected codes have been defined.
        if (!expectedResponseCodes ||
            (Array.isArray(expectedResponseCodes) &&
            expectedResponseCodes.length < 1)) {
            expectedResponseCodes = [200];
        }
        this._createRequest(restMethod, restUri, content,
                            contentType, headers);

        log.debug("Executing request...");
        log.debug("URL: " + this.request.fullUrl);
        log.debug("Method: " + restMethod);

        for (var i = 0; i < maxAttempts; i++) {
            try {
                response = this.request.execute();
                success = true;
                break;
            } catch (e) {
                System.sleep(timeout * 1000);
                log.warn("Request failed: " + e + " retrying...");
                continue;
            }
        }

        if (!success) {
            log.error("Request failed after " + maxAttempts.toString +
                      " attempts. Aborting.");
        }

        statusCode = response.statusCode;
        if (expectedResponseCodes.indexOf(statusCode) > -1) {
            log.debug("Request executed successfully with status: " +
                      statusCode);
        } else {
            log.error("Request failed, incorrect response code received: '" +
                      statusCode + "' expected one of: '" +
                      expectedResponseCodes.join(",") +
                      "'\n" + response.contentAsString);
        }

        return response;
    };

    /**
     * A private method that creates the request.
     * @method
     * @private
     * @param {string} restMethod - The request method.
     * @param {string} restUri - The request uri.
     * @param {string} content - The request content.
     * @param {string} [contentType] - The encoding for content.
     * @param {Properties} [headers] - A key/value set of headers to include in the request.
     * @returns {*} The request response object.
     */

    this._createRequest = function (restMethod, restUri, content,
                                    contentType, headers) {
        var uri = encodeURI(restUri);

        log.debug("Creating REST request...");
        if (restMethod === "GET") {
            this.request = this.restHost.createRequest(restMethod, uri);
        } else {
            if (!content) {
                this.request = this.restHost.createRequest(restMethod, uri);
            } else {
                if (!contentType) {
                    contentType = this.acceptType;
                }
                this.request = this.restHost.createRequest(restMethod, uri, content);
                this.request.contentType = contentType;
            }
        }

        log.debug("Setting headers...");
        this._setHeaders(headers);
    };

    /**
     * A private method that sets the request headers.
     * @method
     * @private
     * @param {Properties} [headers] - A key/value set of headers to include in the request.
     */

    this._setHeaders = function (headers) {
        log.debug("Adding Header: Accept: " + this.acceptType);
        this.request.setHeader("Accept", this.acceptType);
        if (headers && (headers instanceof Properties)) {
            for (var headerKey in headers.keys) {
                var headerValue = headers.get(headerKey);
                // eslint-disable-next-line padding-line-between-statements
                log.debug("Adding Header: " + headerKey + ": " + headerValue);
                this.request.setHeader(headerKey, headerValue);
            }
        }
    };

}

return HttpClient;

Read more “vRealize Orchestrator: HTTP-REST Client”