Getting started, part 1

In this tutorial we are going to install pyws SOAP server providing WSDL, add there some functions and test it.

Environment

Ensure that pyws is installed, read more about Requirements and Installation, this tutorial is based on Django adapter, so check up its requirements too. Also you will need curl for testing purposes.

Project

Let’s create a new Django project:

$ django-admin.py startproject pywstest
$ cd !$

If you have problems with this refer to Django documentation.

Here we will create a file server.py, which we are going to edit:

$ touch server.py

Some code

Open file server.py in your favorite editor and let’s start coding. First of all, we need to import SoapServer class:

from pyws.server import SoapServer

Next, we create a server:

server = SoapServer(
    service_name='Test',
    tns='http://example.com/',
    location='http://localhost:8000/api/',
)

Some explatations about the arguments would be useful:

1. service_name gives a name to our server, it is used to generate a WSDL description.
2. tns, SOAP is based on XML, so no wonder we need a root namespace.
3. location, it tells our server, where it lives. It is only a piece of information required by pyws to generate a proper WSDL description, the real binding to URL will appear later.

Now it’s time to introduce our first function. To register it we need to wrap it up with a special decorator, so it will look like this:

from pyws.functions.register import register

@register()
def add_simple(a, b):
    return a + b

And the last step, we need to edit urls.py, the result would be as following:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from pyws.adapters._django import serve
from pywstest.server import server

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url('^api/(.*)', serve, {'server': server})
)

Here we binded our server to a real URL. Function serve is an adapter used to convert Django requests/responses to/from pyws requests/responses.

That’s it! Let’s test it.

Results

First, start a server:

$ python manage.py runserver

Prepare a request:

$ cat > request
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soap:Body>
    <add_simple xmlns="http://www.example.org/">
      <a>hello </a>
      <b>world</b>
    </add_simple>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Then hit it:

$ curl --data-binary @request http://localhost:8000/api/

The result would be:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<se:Envelope xmlns:se="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <se:Body>
    <add_simple_result namespace="http://example.com/types/">
      <result>hello world</result>
    </add_simple_result>
  </se:Body>
</se:Envelope>

Hey, it looks like we’ve just concatenated two strings via SOAP. Congratulations!

Next, we are going to introduce WSDL and use a SOAP client to send requests, follow me.