Sure, here's a very basic "Hello VI Perl" type example. It just gets the About info from the Service Content managed object. This is assuming the web server you're on is *Nix based and has cgi-bin and perl installed.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use VMware::VIRuntime;
Opts::set_option("username", "administrator");
Opts::set_option("password", "VMware1");
Opts::set_option("url", "https://192.168.73.133/sdk");
Opts::parse();
Opts::validate();
Util::connect();
my $service_content = Vim::get_service_content();
my $full_name = $service_content->about->fullName;
my $html = "<HTML><BODY>$full_name<BR></BODY></HTML>";
Util::disconnect();
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print $html;
In my case I get back the full name value from the serviceContent->about object.
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.0 build-208111
Note the Opts::set_option lines. In the case of the Service Content, a login isn't required, but you'll need that information for more interesting work. You could also use a configuration file, look through the vSphere SDK for Perl Programming Guide. If you were accepting the login information as a form from a web page, you'd just parse the variables and set_option for simplicity.
Obviously this will get a bit more complex as you do more interesting things, for example, you'll want to use eval { } blocks to catch errors from the SDK and handle them in a HTML safe manner.
Another place you may want to look is the vSphere Client Plugins Documentation. There will be a little more setup work, but you'll be able to integrate your cgi based tools directly into the vCenter UI.
If you want something with embedded perl for doing more complex web pages, look at Perl-Mason. I've used it in the past and it's pretty solid. I know VMware is working on a new plugin framework called Flex I believe. This is supposed to replace web and C# plugins in the future, but I'm not sure when that is slated to be released. I do believe the View 4.5 Beta web UIs use the new Flex framework, so it may be getting close.
Reuben Stump | http://www.virtuin.com | @ReubenStump
