I've never used SOAP before and I'm sort of new to Python. I'm doing this to get myself acquainted with both technologies. I've installed SOAPlib and I've tried to read their Client documentation, but I don't understand it too well. Is there anything else I can look into which is more suited for being a SOAP Client library for Python?
Edit: Just in case it helps, I'm using Python 2.6.
SOAP is a Web services technology favoured in certain environments. The following projects seek to support SOAP and related technologies such as WSDL: zeep (on PyPi) - Zeep is a modern and high performant SOAP client build on top of lxml and requests. It's well maintained, and compatible with Python 2 and 3.
Quick Introduction. Zeep inspects the WSDL document and generates the corresponding code to use the services and types in the document. This provides an easy to use programmatic interface to a SOAP server. The emphasis is on SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2, however Zeep also offers support for HTTP Get and Post bindings.
To make SOAP requests to the SOAP API endpoint, use the "Content-Type: application/soap+xml" request header, which tells the server that the request body contains a SOAP envelope. The server informs the client that it has returned a SOAP envelope with a "Content-Type: application/soap+xml" response header.
Update (2016):
If you only need SOAP client, there is well maintained library called zeep. It supports both Python 2 and 3 :)
Update:
Additionally to what is mentioned above, I will refer to Python WebServices page which is always up-to-date with all actively maintained and recommended modules to SOAP and all other webservice types.
Unfortunately, at the moment, I don't think there is a "best" Python SOAP library. Each of the mainstream ones available has its own pros and cons.
Older libraries:
SOAPy: Was the "best," but no longer maintained. Does not work on Python 2.5+
ZSI: Very painful to use, and development is slow. Has a module called "SOAPpy", which is different than SOAPy (above).
"Newer" libraries:
SUDS: Very Pythonic, and easy to create WSDL-consuming SOAP clients. Creating SOAP servers is a little bit more difficult. (This package does not work with Python3. For Python3 see SUDS-py3)
SUDS-py3: The Python3 version of SUDS
spyne: Creating servers is easy, creating clients a little bit more challenging. Documentation is somewhat lacking.
ladon: Creating servers is much like in soaplib (using a decorator). Ladon exposes more interfaces than SOAP at the same time without extra user code needed.
pysimplesoap: very lightweight but useful for both client and server - includes a web2py server integration that ships with web2py.
Of the above, I've only used SUDS personally, and I liked it a lot.
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With