============================================== SOAPpy - Simple to use SOAP library for Python

Current Maintainer:

jeff kit <[email protected]>

Original Authors:

Cayce Ullman <[email protected]>
    Brian Matthews <[email protected]>

Contributions by:

Christopher Blunck <[email protected]>
Brad Knotwell <[email protected]>
Mark Bucciarelli <[email protected]> (ported WSDL
         client from ZSI)
Ivan R. Judson 	<[email protected]> (Globus support)
Kirk Strauser <[email protected]>
Antonio Beamud Montero <[email protected]> (patches
     for integrating SOAPpy into Zope)
And others.

Copyright (c) 2002-2005, Pfizer, Inc. Copyright (c) 2001, Cayce Ullman. Copyright (c) 2001, Brian Matthews. All rights reserved, see the file LICENSE for conditions of use.

INTRODUCTION

The goal of the SOAPpy team is to provide a full-featured SOAP library
for Python that is very simple to use and that fully supports dynamic
interaction between clients and servers.

INCLUDED
--------

- General SOAP Parser based on sax.xml
- General SOAP Builder
- SOAP Proxy for RPC client code
- SOAP Server framework for RPC server code

FEATURES
--------

- Handles all SOAP 1.0 types
- Handles faults 
- Allows namespace specification
- Allows SOAPAction specification
- Homogeneous typed arrays
- Supports multiple schemas
- Header support (mustUnderstand and actor)
- XML attribute support
- Multi-referencing support (Parser/Builder)
- Understands SOAP-ENC:root attribute
- Good interop, passes all client tests for Frontier, SOAP::LITE, SOAPRMI
- Encodings
- SSL clients (with Python compiled with OpenSSL support)
- SSL servers (with Python compiled with OpenSSL support and M2Crypto
  installed)
- Encodes XML tags per SOAP 1.2 name mangling specification (Gregory Warnes)
- Automatic stateful SOAP server support (Apache v2.x) (blunck2)
- WSDL client support
- WSDL server support

TODO (See RELEASE_INFO and CHANGELOG for recent changes)
----

- Timeout on method calls
- Advanced arrays (sparse, multidimensional and partial)
- Attachments
- mod_python example
- medusa example
- Improved documentation

MANIFEST
--------

Files


    README	        This file
    RELEASE_NOTES       General information about each release
    ChangeLog           Detailed list of changes
    TODO		List of tasks that need to be done

    setup.py            Python installation control files
    MANIFEST
    MANIFEST.in
    
    SOAPpy.spec*        RPM package control file

Directories

    SOAPpy/*            Source code for the package
    SOAPpy/wstools/*    Source code for WSDL tools
    tests/*             unit tests and examples
    validate/*          interop client and servers
    bid/*		N+I interop client and server
    doc/*		Documentation
    contrib/		Contributed examples (also see test/)
    docs/		Documentation
    tools/              Misc tools useful for the SOAPpy developers
    zope/               Patches to Zope allowing it to provide SOAP services

INSTALLATION

REQUIRED PACKAGES:
-----------------

- fpconst 0.6.0 or later,
  <http://research.warnes.net/projects/rzope/fpconst/>

- pyXML 0.8.3 or later, <http://pyxml.sourceforge.net>

OPTIONAL PACKAGES
-----------------

- pyGlobus, optional support for Globus,
  <http://www-itg.lbl.gov/gtg/projects/pyGlobus/>

- M2Crypto.SSL, optional support for server-side SSL
  <http://sandbox.rulemaker.net/ngps/m2/>

- If Python is compiled with SSL support (Python 2.3 does so by
  default), client-side use of SSL is supported

INSTALLATION STEPS
------------------

As of version 0.9.8 SOAPpy can be installed using the standard python
package installation tools.  

To install:

  1) Unpack the distribution package:

     On Windows, use your favorite zip file uncompression tool.

     On Unix: 
    
         $ tar -xvzf SOAPpy-$VERSION$.tar.gz
    
         if you have gnu tar, otherwise
    
         $ gzcat SOAPpy-$VERSION$.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
    
  2) Change into the source directory

     $ cd SOAPpy-$VERSION$

  3) Compile the package 

     $ python setup.py build

  4) Install the package

 On Windows:

     $ python setup.py install

 On Unix install as the owner of the python directories
 (usally root):

     $ su root
         Password: XXXXXX
         $ python setup.py install

DOCUMENTATION

QUICK START
-----------

A simple "Hello World" http SOAP server:

    import SOAPpy
    def hello():
    return "Hello World"

    server = SOAPpy.SOAPServer(("localhost", 8080))
    server.registerFunction(hello)
    server.serve_forever()

And the corresponding client:

    import SOAPpy
    server = SOAPpy.SOAPProxy("http://localhost:8080/")
    print server.hello()

BASIC TUTORIAL
--------------

Mark Pilgrims' _Dive Into Python_, published in printed form by
Apress and online at at http://diveintopython.org provides a
nice tutorial for SOAPpy in Chapter 12, "SOAP Web Services".
See http://diveintopython.org/soap_web_services .

OTHER DOCUMENTATION
-------------------
  
For further information see the files in the docs/ directory.

Note that documentation is one of SOAPpy's current weak points.
Please help us out!

GETTING HELP

REPORTING BUGS
--------------

Please submit bug reports, feature requests, patches, etc at the
Python Web Services web site:  http://pywebsvcs.sourceforge.net.

MAILING LIST
============

Please address questions and general discussion to the
pywebsvcs-talk mailing list, [email protected].

For subscription information visit
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/pywebsvcs-talk.  
List archives are available at
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=pywebsvcs-talk

Please remember that the authors do have day jobs, so please try
the mailing list before contacting them directy.  

$Id: README,v 1.18 2005/02/22 15:58:35 warnes Exp $