[Soap-Python] rpclib/soaplib with WSDL parsing

[Wolfgang Sourdeau]

Hi Burak!


Thank you for your response! I only have a few things to add...

> The real reason I got rid of wsdlparse was because it did things the 
> java way -- it generated code. That's a fundamentally wrong approach 
> when you're working with Python because, by the virtue of being a 
> dynamic language, Python can parse wsdl and build required classes and 
> interfaces on the fly.
It makes sense (except for one thing explained below) to make this all 
automatic. Actually I think it would actually even make more sense to 
remove the @soapmethod modifier altogether to make things look even more 
like regular method calls. This would require other programmatic 
utilities to declare datatypes but in my opinion it makes sense too 
since this part pertains more to the data representation than to the 
implementation.

Regarding the fact that you removed the script, please note that except 
of generating the code automatically, this has just the effect of 
forcing the developer to do it manually. So as long as the wsdl "class 
builder" is not in place, it's a bit useless since the effect is the same...

>
> I also wanted to focus on making soaplib a proper soap server, because 
> that's what was lacking then in the Python world. (There even was a 
> time i'd entirely dumped client functionality in favor of suds.) Oh 
> and wsdlparse did not work most of the time anyway.
>
> If suds wasn't already there, we'd probably have wsdl parsing in 
> rpclib by now. (I already have a javascript soap client which also 
> parses wsdl, here: http://github.com/arskom/qxsoap) But I did not 
> think duplicating suds' functionality in rpclib would benefit anybody, 
> so I didn't do it.
What do you mean by the "suds functionality" ? The fact that it's a 
client interface library?

>
> I'd nevertheless encourage you to work on a wsdl parser for rpclib, 
> because i feel it'd have a greater benefit outside of the SOAP world 
> -- I've stumbled upon a few people in the lxml mailing list who might 
> be interested working on an Xml Schema parser. They might want to give 
> you a hand if you ask around.
I would very like to, but I won't be allowed the time to do so.

There is another similar subproject (for the OpenChange project) that I 
would ideally like to implement where the structure definitions are 
encoded as an IDL and I don't think I will ever have time for this either.


Thank you!


Wolfgang