Sample on how to use vCenter API

vcenter-api.md

• Authenticate to vCenter to get user credential.

# curl -k -X POST https://<FQDN or IP>/rest/com/vmware/cis/session -u <USERNAME>:<PASSWORD> | jq
{
  "value": "SESSIONID"
}

• Save the session id to a variable

# ID=SESSIONID

• Access the end point with the session id

# curl -k -X GET -H "vmware-api-session-id: $ID" https:/ /<VCENTERIP or FQDN>/rest/vcenter/vm |jq
{
  "value": [
    {
      "memory_size_MiB": 16384,
      "vm": "vm-1",
      "name": "VM01",
      "power_state": "POWERED_ON",
      "cpu_count": 4
    },
    {
      "memory_size_MiB": 16384,
      "vm": "vm-2",
      "name": "VM02",
      "power_state": "POWERED_ON",
      "cpu_count": 4
    }
  ]
}

# curl -k -X GET -H "vmware-api-session-id: $ID" https://<VCENTERIP or FQDN>/rest/vcenter/datastore |jq
{
  "value": [
    {
      "datastore": "datastore-1",
      "name": "DS1",
      "type": "VMFS",
      "free_space": 290276245504,
      "capacity": 291789340672
    },
    {
      "datastore": "datastore-2",
      "name": "DS2",
      "type": "VMFS",
      "free_space": 3349917204480,
      "capacity": 3599451029504
    }
  ]
}

List of apis can be found below

• https://<vCenter IP>/apiexplorer
• https://code.vmware.com/apis/191/vsphere-automation

Thanks for the feedback! Some of the comments in the command were wrong so I fixed it up.
Hope it works on your end!

Does not work for me :/
But got it working with following commands:

curl -k -i -u <username>:<password> -X POST -c cookie-jar.txt https://<host>/rest/com/vmware/cis/session

curl -k -b cookie-jar.txt https://<host>/rest/vcenter/vm | jq

Thanks for the commands!
I don't have a vSphere environment handy so I'll update the gist whenever I have the chance to test it!

Useful example! Thanks @kaitoii11

Really useful, thanks a lot!

Cool, thanks!
So, I saw somewhere that you can use that route via the vCenter to reset an ESXi's root password, provided you got the host-id with https:///rest/vcenter/host, how would you do that? I have seen a way in PowerCLI (by LucD), but I'm trying to figure out a "purer" way using curl...