If I get your question right, you want a NetApp API way to check the "file meta" informations (aka. inode's), right?
If so, your (7-Mode) API is "file-list-directory-iter-start".. and you need to implement a "recursive" way of searching, if desired 
Example:
input:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<netapp xmlns="http://www.netapp.com/filer/admin" version="1.19">
<file-list-directory-iter-start>
<path>/vol/anton_test</path>
</file-list-directory-iter-start>
</netapp>
output:
.
.
.
<file-info>
<name>anton</name>
<file-type>directory</file-type>
<creation-timestamp>1354800171</creation-timestamp>
<modified-timestamp>1355758658</modified-timestamp>
<changed-timestamp>1355758658</changed-timestamp>
<accessed-timestamp>1428096544</accessed-timestamp>
<perm>755</perm>
<owner-id>0</owner-id>
<group-id>0</group-id>
<file-size>4096</file-size>
<hard-links-count>5</hard-links-count>
<inode-number>96</inode-number>
<acl-type>no_acl</acl-type>
<is-empty>false</is-empty>
<is-vm-aligned>false</is-vm-aligned>
</file-info>
.
.
.
And if you have access to the filesystems with a NFS and/or SMB client, it's faster and smarter to use host OS tools, as other stated already...
regards
Anton Oks