Using Third Party Tools

You can use third party tools such as Chrome Developer Tools or Firebug to reveal the data that you can then use to construct a vRealize Automation REST API service call.

You can adapt these steps to perform a different action, such as adding a tenant.

Prerequisites

This example shows how you might use the Chrome Developer Tools to perform a catalog service query. This option is not available for all vRealize Automation functions.

  • Open a Chrome browser session and log in to the vRealize Automation console as a business group user with access to catalog items.
  • Open a command prompt or a shell and log in to the vRealize Automation command line interface.

Procedure

  1. Click the Catalog tab in the vRealize Automation console.
  2. Click the catalog Item you want to request.
  3. Enter the request information for the catalog item, but do not submit your changes.
  4. Press the Ctrl-Shift-I keys simultaneously to open the Chrome Developer Tools. For example:
    1. Click the Network tab.
    2. Click Record Network Log.
    3. Click Submit in the console.
  5. Verify that the network logs in the Chrome Developer Tools contain the relevant data. For example:
    1. Locate a makeRequest POST in the network recordings.
    2. Click makeRequest POST to view its details.
    3. Scroll to view the Form Data url and postData sections.
    The url section shows the vRealize Automation service and URI for you to use. This example uses the catalog-service, under the uri consumer/requests.

    The postData section shows the JSON data passed in the HTTP POST call. You can insert the JSON data in a JSON file, for example request.json, and submit it with the POST method in the command line.

    Note: Click Clear to purge the network logs if they become too large to navigate easily.
  6. Enter the following call in the vRealize Automation shell, where the request.json text file contains the JSON data from the postData section. 
    rest post --headers --service catalog-service --uri consumer/requests --data request.json

    This call makes the same request that was submitted by using the console.