Serializing a suds object in python

Question

Ok I'm working on getting better with python, so I'm not sure this is the right way to go about what I'm doing to begin with, but here's my current problem...

I need to get some information via a SOAP method, and only use part of the information now but store the entire result for future uses (we need to use the service as little as possible). Looking up the best way to access the service I figured suds was the way to go, and it was simple and worked like a charm to get the data. But now I want to save the result somehow, preferably serialized / in a database so I can pull it out later and use it the same.

What's the best way to do this, it looks like pickle/json isn't an option? Thanks!

Update Reading the top answer at How can I pickle suds results? gives me a better idea of why this isn't an option, I guess I'm stuck recreating a basic object w/ the information I need?

Answer 1

I have been using following approach to convert Suds object into JSON:

from suds.sudsobject import asdict

def recursive_asdict(d):
    """Convert Suds object into serializable format."""
    out = {}
    for k, v in asdict(d).items():
        if hasattr(v, '__keylist__'):
            out[k] = recursive_asdict(v)
        elif isinstance(v, list):
            out[k] = []
            for item in v:
                if hasattr(item, '__keylist__'):
                    out[k].append(recursive_asdict(item))
                else:
                    out[k].append(item)
        else:
            out[k] = v
    return out

def suds_to_json(data):
    return json.dumps(recursive_asdict(data))

Answer 2

Yep, I confirm the explanation I gave in the answer you refer to -- dynamically generated classes are not easily picklable (nor otherwise easily serializable), you need to extract all the state information, pickle that state, and reconstruct the tricky sudsobject on retrieval if you really insist on using it;-).