Tuning method arguments¶

In Python, arguments of a function may be optional or mandatory. SOAP allows for repeated arguments as well; this is done using the customize() method of Soap objects.

Arguments of a SOAP method have various cardinality-related attributes:

• min_occurs: The minimal number of occurences of this parameter; set to 0 for an optional field
• max_occurs: The maximal number of occurences of this parameter; if more than 1, the argument will be passed as a list instead.
• nillable: True or False, whether a value of ‘Null’ (an empty XML element) could be passed for this arguments; this translates to a Python value of None.

Here is an example:

class MyService(DefinitionBase):

  @soap(
      String.customize(min_occurs=1, max_occurs=1, nillable=False),
      String.customize(min_occurs=0, max_occurs="unbounded", nillable=True),
      String.customize(min_occurs=4, max_occurs=10, nillable=False)
  )
  def my_method(self, mandatory_string, list_of_strings, a_few_strings):
      pass

• The first argument must be present, and cannot be None; it might still be an empty string.
• The second argument will be a list of strings, where some values might be None (for instance ['foo', None, 'bar', None, None, 'baz']
• The third argument is a list of strings, containing between 4 and 10 items. It cannot contain the None value: ['foo', 'bar', 'baz', 'foo', '', 'foo']

# These are equivalent
String(min_occurs=0, max_occurs=1, nillable=False)
String.customize(min_occurs=0, max_occurs=1, nillable=False)