The vSphere Web Client SDK contains libraries, sample plug-ins, and various SDK tools that help you develop and build extensions to the vSphere Web Client and the vSphere Client.

In vSphere 6.5, system administrators can use the vSphere Client to manage their vSphere infrastructures. The vSphere Client development kit is added to the vSphere Web Client SDK allowing developers to create custom HTML plug-ins and hybrid plug-ins for both Web browser-based applications.

Setting up your development environment for creating HTML and hybrid plug-ins for the vSphere Web Client involves several tasks.

1

Download the .zip file that contains all components of the vSphere Web Client SDK.

2

You must set up your Java development environment to create extensions to the Service Layer.

3

Apache Ant is used by the scripts in the SDK to generate plug-in project templates and to build plug-ins.

4

You can use an IDE of your choice to develop custom plug-ins for the vSphere Client and the vSphere Web Client. The SDK provides a plug-in for Eclipse to ease your development process which suggests that you have installed the Eclipse IDE on your machine.

5

The vSphere Web Client SDK provides an Eclipse plug-in that adds tools and wizards to your Eclipse IDE to ease your HTML and Flex-based plug-in development process. This step is required only if you use the Eclipse IDE for developing HTML plug-ins.

6

If you want to verify your custom plug-ins, you can deploy the plug-ins first on your local vSphere Client and vSphere Web Client. You must register your local instances of the Web browser applications with the vCenter Server Appliance or vCenter Server for Windows to be able to deploy your plug-ins locally.

7

You can use the Virgo server from the Eclipse IDE in your development environment to test easily your HTML plug-ins. This step is required only if you use the Eclipse IDE for developing HTML plug-ins.

8

To compile the resources of your HTML plug-ins, you must install the Adobe Flex 4.6 SDK on your development machine.