2.0

About the Data Director API 2
The Data Director API provides support for developers who are building interactive clients of
vFabric Data Director using a RESTful application development style.
The Data Director API calls communicate over HTTP, exchanging representations of Data Director objects.
These representations are encoded as XML elements or JSON objects. depending on the format of your request.
You use HTTP GET requests to retrieve the current representation of an object, HTTP POST and PUT requests
to create or update an object, and HTTP DELETE requests to delete an object.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“REST API Versioning,” on page 7
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“Client Workflow Overview,” on page 7
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“Understanding Resources and DB Groups,” on page 9
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“Understanding Call Dependencies,” on page 10
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“Working with Enumeration Types,” on page 11
REST API Versioning
The vFabric Data Director REST API supports versioning through HTTP Accept/Content-Type headers.
As an example, if you want to use the version 2.0 APIs, append the vFabric Data Director version prefix to the
standard media type in the request Accept header.
Accept: application/vnd.vmware.vfdd-v2.0+json
The response will include a versioned Content-Type response header.
Content-Type: application/vnd.vmware.vfdd-v2.0+json
If you don't include a version prefix in the Accept header, then the latest version content is returned.
Client Workflow Overview
vFabric Data Director API clients implement a RESTful workflow, making HTTP requests to the server and
retrieving the information they need from the server’s responses.
About RESTful Workflows
REST, an acronym for Representational State Transfer, describes an architectural style characteristic of
programs that rely on the inherent properties of hypermedia to create and modify the state of an object whose
serialized representation is accessible as a URL.
VMware, Inc.
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