Getting tasks from esxi

Question

I have the following code:

VMware.Vim.Task task = new VMware.Vim.Task(Client,thisDC.MoRef);
foreach(VMware.Vim.Task eachTask in task)
                {

                    lvLogging.Items.Add(eachTask.DescriptionId);
                }

But I'm getting the error:

foreach statement cannot operate on variables of type 'VMware.Vim.Task' because 'VMware.Vim.Task' does not contain a public definition for 'GetEnumerator'

So I did the following:

List<VMware.Vim.Task> task = new List<VMware.Vim.Task>();
task = new VMware.Vim.Task(Client,thisDC.MoRef);

but now I have the following error:

Cannot implicitly convert type 'VMware.Vim.Task' to 'System.Collections.Generic.List<VMware.Vim.Task>'

Am I totally lost here? What I'm trying to do is to get the tasks from a ESXi host and then send to a ListView.

Answer 1

Your first snippet tries to enumerate a single Task (not a list of tasks), and therefore fails. Your second snippet tries to assign a single Task to a list of Tasks and therefore fails.

You are also abusing the ManagedObjectReference structure. It should not contain a Client. Rather, it should contain a type string (e.g. "Task", "VirtualMachine", etc.) and a value (e.g. "task-123" or "vm-456"). You should read the relevant section in the vSphere SDK programming guide - this will be the foundation of whatever APIs you try to consume.

I think a basic point that is lost here is that you will generally not create a Task on your own; rather, the vSphere API will return the Task to you based on some criteria you specify. One way of obtaining these tasks is through the TaskHistoryCollector, as demonstrated for example here. I suggest you start with the sample in that thread which should be easy enough to convert from Java to C#. See that you can get it to work and that you understand what it does, then post another question if needed.