ahlawat.net

I was experimenting with writing a secured web services client in python and I was surprised how easy it was using python suds.

First write your webservice in java:

@Remote
public interface TestService {
public String echo(String s);

public int add(int a, int b);
}

and the implementation:

@WebService
@Stateless
public class TestServiceImpl implements TestService {
public String echo(String s) {
return s;
}

public int add(int a, int b) {
return a+b;
}
}

Expose it using a webapp and configure security using web.xml:

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" version="2.5">
<display-name>project-name-war</display-name>
<description></description>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>WS</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>net.ahlawat.TestServiceImpl</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>WS</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<security-constraint>
<web-resource-collection>
<web-resource-name>web service</web-resource-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</web-resource-collection>
<auth-constraint>
<role-name>user</role-name>
</auth-constraint>
</security-constraint>
<login-config>
<auth-method>BASIC</auth-method>
</login-config>
<security-role>
<description>Known users of the Foobar service</description>
<role-name>user</role-name>
</security-role>
</web-app>

and configure it to a jboss login module using jboss-web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jboss-web>
<security-domain>java:/jaas/tws</security-domain>
</jboss-web>

Basically that is it - you can then code up your python clinet like this:

from suds.client import Client

url = "https://127.0.0.1:8080/webServiceTest-war?wsdl"

client = Client(url, username="user", password="userPassword2010!")

#print client

result = client.service.add(1,2)

print result

result = client.service.echo("Hello world")

print result

And not surprisingly the result:

C:\cygwin\home\deepti\python-suds-0.4>python client.py
3
Hello world

C:\cygwin\home\deepti\python-suds-0.4>

Its amazing how easy this was. I think this is where you think programming in java sucks - putting out a simple client using basic auth would have taken 5 pages of code. Suds is an excellent library to write a quick web service client. Great tool to have in your programmers arsenal.