In addition to the WSGI Service API, soaplib provides a general purpose Message API, which allows you to create the xml portions of SOAP message programatically. The Message object follows the to_parent_element/from_xml usage pattern as the type.
>>> from soaplib.core.soap import Message
>>> from soaplib.core.model.primitive import String, Integer, Float
>>> import lxml.etree as et
>>> message = Message('myFunction',[('a',String),('b',Integer),('c',Float)])
>>> print et.tostring(message.to_parent_element('a',13,3.14))
<myFunction><a xmlns="" xsi:type="xs:string">a</a><b xmlns="" xsi:type="xs:int">13</b><c xmlns="" xsi:type="xs:float">3.14</c></myFunction>
>>>
Messages can be combined with the MethodDescriptor object to represent both input and output messages of a SOAP method call. The method descriptor does not do much more than simply hold the method name, input and output messages, but it can be used with the SimpleSoapClient to make remote SOAP service calls. The Axis stock quote Client example can be written:
in_message = Message('getPrice',[('symbol',String)],ns='http://quickstart.samples/xsd')
out_message = Message('getPriceResponse',[('return',Float)],ns='http://quickstart.samples/xsd')
method = MethodDescriptor('getPrice',in_message,out_message)
client = SimpleSoapClient('localhost:8080','/axis2/services/StockQuoteService',method)
print client('IBM')
Message names can also be specified in the ElementTree QName syntax (ex “{http://quickstart.samples/xsd}getPrice”), and an optional ‘typ’ keyword can be specified for the message, which is used durring wsdl generation.