Python Cookbook

Writing a Web Service That Supports Both XML-RPC and SOAP

Credit: Graham Dumpleton

Problem

You need to expose a service on the Web in a way that makes the service accessible to both XML-RPC and SOAP clients.

Solution

The OSE package offers a lot of extra flexibility for Python distributed processing, both server-side and client-side. Here is how we can code the actual web service:

# the actual web service, dbwebser.py
# needs the OSE package from http://ose.sourceforge.net

import netsvc
import netsvc.xmlrpc
import netsvc.soap
import signal
import dbm

class Database(netsvc.Service):

  def _ _init_ _(self, name):
      netsvc.Service._ _init_ _(self, name)
      self._db = dbm.open(name,'c')
      self.exportMethod(self.get)
      self.exportMethod(self.put)
      self.exportMethod(self.keys)
      self.joinGroup("web-services")

  def get(self, key):
      return self._db[key]

  def put(self, key, value):
      self._db[key] = value

  def keys(self):
      return self._db.keys(  )

dispatcher = netsvc.Dispatcher(  )
dispatcher.monitor(signal.SIGINT)
httpd = netsvc.HttpDaemon(8000)

database = Database("test")

rpcgw1 = netsvc.xmlrpc.RpcGateway("web-services")
httpd.attach("/xmlrpc/database", rpcgw1)

rpcgw2 = netsvc.soap.RpcGateway("web-services")
httpd.attach("/soap/database", rpcgw2)

httpd.start(  )
dispatcher.run(  )

Here’s a client that accesses the service via XML-RPC:

# dbclient.py # an XML-RPC client using the PythonWare xmlrpclib module (also # included in the standard library with Python 2.2 and later) import xmlrpclib url = "http://localhost:8000/xmlrpc/database/test" ...