Differences in vm.info with and without -json

[zsarosi]

Hi
why does the command govc vm.info -r <vmname> contains the "Network:" information and govc vm.info -json -r <vmname> does not? I was expecting, that the json version contains at least the same info or more as without -json.

[dougm]

vm.info -json output is the raw VirtualMachine managed object, that includes network, datastore, etc. fields which are references to other managed objects. The -r flag just outputs the name(s) instead of refs. It is possible to get the object names from json output, for example:

% govc vm.info -json $vm | jq -r .virtualMachines[].network[].value | xargs -n1 govc ls -L
/folder-WCP_DC/WCP_DC/network/VM Network
/folder-WCP_DC/WCP_DC/network/vlan101portgroup

% govc vm.info -json $vm | jq -r .virtualMachines[].network[].value | xargs -n1 -I% govc collect -s % name
VM Network
vlan101portgroup