Saving and Using Sessions

The vSphere SDK for Perl library includes several subroutines that save and reuse sessions, so you can maintain sessions across scripts. Using sessions can enhance security: Instead of storing passwords in scripts, you can run the Vim::login() subroutine in your script using the name of the session file. The session file does not expose password information.

Saving Sessions

You can save a session using the subroutine call syntax as follows:

Vim::save_session():

 

...

# usual login procedure with connect()

Util::connect();

...

# save the global session in file .mysession

Vim::save_session(session_file => '.mysession');

Alternatively, you can use save_session() with the object-oriented syntax (see Using Multiple Sessions):

...

# object-oriented login

my $service_url = "https://$server/sdk/vimService";

my $vim = Vim->new(service_url => $service_url);

$vim->login(user_name => $username, password => $password); ...

# save session $vim in file .mysession

$vim->save_session(session_file => '.mysession');

The session remains active until the program runs a log out or disconnect operation, or until the program times out. Time out is 30 minutes after the last operation was performed.

Loading Sessions

You can use load_session() to load a saved session into the global session as follows:

Vim::load_session(session_file => '.visession');

Alternatively, you can load a session using the object-oriented syntax as follows:

my $service_url = "https://$server/sdk/vimService";

my $vim = Vim->new(service_url => $service_url);

$vim = $vim->load_session(session_file => '.visession');