Introduction

Logical Folders are containers for storing and organizing inventory objects, in this case virtual machines. Just like the network resource, a Folder has a Managed Object Reference (moref) which is required for either virtual machine deployment (where a virtual machine will be placed upon creation) or updating virtual machine containing folder (move).

The /v2/folder resource lists folders you are allowed to access in our environment. If by any chance you cannot see a folder and you add it to a new virtual machine creation request or a virtual machine change request, they will not be successfully processed. If you believe you need access to a specific folder, please let us know.

On this page:

The following table shows a brief description and HTTP methods allowed to interact with logical folders.

Resource	URI	Description
Folder	/folder	Logical Folder Management resource. List permitted folders and their attributes
Folder Object	/folder/<moref>	Get logical folder attributes.
Folder Name	/folder/<moref>/name	Rename object.
Folder Children	/folder/<moref>/children	Get children folders if any.
Folder Parent	/folder/<moref>/parent	Get or move folder to a different parent.
Folder VMs	/folder/<moref>/vm	List children virtual machines.
Folder Permission	/folder/<moref>/permission	List object permission.

TK stores the Cloud API Token generated as a result of the following POST request to the /auth/request-token resource:

curl -X POST https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/auth/request-token -u <username>

For example, extracting the token with the jq command:

TK=$(curl -X POST https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/auth/request-token -u <username> | jq -r '.token')

List

In order to list allowed Folders you should make a GET request to the endpoint /v2/folder, passing your access token. As a result, you will get a reference URI /v2/folder/<moref> to get detailed information about that folder.

http GET "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder" "Authorization: Bearer $TK"
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TK" -X GET "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder"

The following examples implements HTTPie and CURL to list all folders a user have access to:

Response Body

{
    "_links": {
        "self": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder?per_page=3&filter=path,like,%25Testing%25"
    },
    "data": [
        {
            "created_on": "2019-07-17 Wed 15:18:59 EDT",
            "has_children": false,
            "has_parent": true,
            "moref": "group-v8923",
            "name": "ut20170621092129",
            "parent": {
                "moref": "group-v7350",
                "name": "Testing",
                "parent_moref": "group-v7349",
                "path": "VSS > Development > Testing",
                "vim_type": "vim.Folder"
            },
            "parent_moref": "group-v7350",
            "path": "VSS > Development > Testing > ut20170621092129",
            "updated_on": "2019-07-17 Wed 15:18:59 EDT",
            "vim_type": "vim.Folder"
        },
        {
            "created_on": "2019-07-17 Wed 15:18:59 EDT",
            "has_children": true,
            "has_parent": true,
            "moref": "group-v7350",
            "name": "Testing",
            "parent": {
                "moref": "group-v7349",
                "name": "Development",
                "parent_moref": "group-v305",
                "path": "VSS > Development",
                "vim_type": "vim.Folder"
            },
            "parent_moref": "group-v7349",
            "path": "VSS > Development > Testing",
            "updated_on": "2019-07-17 Wed 15:18:59 EDT",
            "vim_type": "vim.Folder"
        },
        {
            "created_on": "2019-07-17 Wed 15:18:59 EDT",
            "has_children": true,
            "has_parent": true,
            "moref": "group-v8900",
            "name": "ut20170135153548",
            "parent": {
                "moref": "group-v7350",
                "name": "Testing",
                "parent_moref": "group-v7349",
                "path": "VSS > Development > Testing",
                "vim_type": "vim.Folder"
            },
            "parent_moref": "group-v7350",
            "path": "VSS > Development > Testing > ut20170135153548",
            "updated_on": "2019-07-17 Wed 15:18:59 EDT",
            "vim_type": "vim.Folder"
        }
    ],
    "meta": {
        "count": 3,
        "pages": {
            "first_url": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder?per_page=100&page=1&expand=True",
            "last_url": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder?per_page=100&page=1&expand=True",
            "next_url": null,
            "page": 1,
            "pages": 1,
            "per_page": 100,
            "prev_url": null,
            "total": 3
        },
        "time": "0.11766s",
        "user": "jm"
    }
}

Paging

All requests to the /folder URL are paginated. The response body includes a 'meta.pages' key with everything to navigate through the results, for instance:

Key	Description
first_url	Contain the URLs to navigate through results.
last_url
prev_url
next_url
page	Current page
pages	Total number of pages
per_page	Results per page. Maximum 250; Default 10.
total	Total number of results

Results per page can be set by including the parameter in the URL query, so we can get the desired number of elements per page, for example:

http GET "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder?per_page=1" "Authorization: Bearer $TK"
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TK" -X GET "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder?per_page=1"

Filtering

Folders can be filtered by adding the filter argument to the query string in the following format:

filter=<field_name>,<operator>,<value>

Operators can be:

Operator	Description
eq	Equals
ne	Not equal
lt	Lower than
le	Lower equal
gt	Greater than
ge	Greater equal
like	Matching pattern
in	Match value in many items separated by commas

A resource can be filtered by as many attributes the request has, for instance /folder can be filtered by moref, path, created_on, name, etc. Thus, the following example will filter only by name=Prod

http GET "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder?per_page=10&expand=1&filter=name,like,%Prod%" "Authorization: Bearer $TK"

Sorting

The resource provides also attribute sorting by adding the sort parameter in the URL query string in the following format:

sort=<field_name>,<asc|desc>

The following example shows how to filter by label:

http GET "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder?per_page=10&expand=1&filter=name,like,%Prod%&sort=label,desc" "Authorization: Bearer $TK"

curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer $TK" "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/network?per_page=10&expand=1&filter=name,like,%VL%&sort=label,desc"

Create

To create a new folder you just need to submit a request to /v2/folder/<moref> and provide the name of the new folder as a parameter. So, the folder <moref> will be parent of the new folder. For this example we will create a subfolder in APIDemo > APISubFolder, so request will be crafted as follows:

http -a $TK POST https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder/group-v6736 "Authorization: Bearer $TK" name=APISubFolder
curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer $TK" -X POST https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder/group-v6736 -d '{"name": "APISubFolder"}'

Respoonse Headers

HTTP/1.1 202 ACCEPTED
Allow: POST, HEAD, OPTIONS, GET
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 400
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Wed, 11 May 2016 17:19:15 GMT
Location: https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/request/task/fff43ba4-40c1-40df-bf5b-02f5424e091a
Server: nginx
X-RateLimit-Limit: 3000
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 2997
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1462989600

Response Body

{
    "data": {
        "_links": {
            "request": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/request/folder/2",
            "task": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/request/task/fff43ba4-40c1-40df-bf5b-02f5424e091a"
        },
        "message": "VM Folder creation request has been accepted for processing",
        "name": "Accepted",
        "state": "Submitted",
        "status": 202
    },
    "meta": {
        "time": "0.07877s",
        "user": "jm"
    }
}

Listing folder

Listing folders with the API word in them, would show the folder has been successfully created:

Response Body

{
    "_links": {
        "api": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/",
        "self": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder"
    },
    "data": [
        {
            "_links": {
                "self": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder/group-v6899"
            },
            "full_path": "VSS > Sandbox > jm > APIDemo > APISubFolder",
            "moref": "group-v6899",
            "name": "APISubFolder",
            "parent": "APIDemo"
        },
        {
            "_links": {
                "self": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder/group-v6736"
            },
            "full_path": "VSS > Sandbox > jm > APIDemo",
            "moref": "group-v6736",
            "name": "APIDemo",	
            "parent": "jm"
        }
    ],
    "meta": {
        "count": 2,
        "time": "0.55448s",
        "user": "jm"
    }
}

Update

Renaming or moving folders between your folder tree is possible by making a PUT request to the URI folder in question sending both the attribute and value you wish to update. Currently, we support name and parent as supported attributes.

Attribute	Description
name	folder new name
parent	managed object reference of new parent folder

The following request illustrates how to update a folder's name (group-v6736) to NewAPIFolder:

http PUT https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder/group-v6736 "Authorization: Bearer $TK" attribute="name" value="NewAPIFolder" 
curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer $TK" -X PUT https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder/group-v6736 -d '{"attribute": "name", "value": "NewAPIFolder"}'

HTTP response would look something like:

Respoonse Headers

HTTP/1.1 202 ACCEPTED
Allow: HEAD, GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 437
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 14:38:32 GMT
Location: https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/request/task/d7eec47d-fd14-4958-a5ff-bfb93a191a01
Server: nginx
X-RateLimit-Limit: 3000
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 2996
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1467039600

Response Body

{
    "data": {
        "_links": {
            "request": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/request/folder/3",
            "task": "https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/request/task/d7eec47d-fd14-4958-a5ff-bfb93a191a01"
        },
        "message": "VM Folder change request has been accepted for processing",
        "name": "Accepted",
        "state": "Submitted",
        "status": 202
    },
    "meta": {
        "time": "0.39327s",
        "user": "jm"
    }
}

If you wish to update any parent folder, just select the new parent moref and include it in the PUT request attribute's value, i.e.

http PUT https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder/group-v6736 "Authorization: Bearer $TK" attribute="parent" value="group-v1234"
curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer $TK" -X PUT https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2/folder/group-v6736 -d '{"attribute": "parent", "value": "group-v1234""}'

Where group-v1234 would be new parent of group-v6736