I have a medium sized application that runs as a .net web-service which I do not control,
and I want to create a loose pythonic API above it to enable easy scripting.
I wanted to know what is the best/most practical solution for using web-services in python.
Edit:
I need to consume a complex soap WS
and I have no control over it.
If I have to expose APIs, I prefer doing it as JSON. Python has excellent support for JSON objects (JSON Objects are infact python dictionaries)
Jython and IronPython give access to great Java & .NET SOAP libraries.
If you need CPython, ZSI has been flaky for me, but it could be possible to use a tool like Robin to wrap a good C++ SOAP library such as gSOAP or Apache Axis C++
Most of the packages on python that a SOAP service through them can be called works on python 2.x, but had problems on Python 3.x
The best fit for python 3.x that I've found is suds-jurko
Related
I want to use a Python script as a frontend to a Prolog program that uses the SWI-PL engine.
So, the components of the setup are:
Python (2.7 or higher)
SWI-PL: website here
I've been looking around for an interface between SWI-PL and Python.
What I found are:
PySwip but it seems to be lacking from what i see from old questions here, and also seems unsupported.
PyLog, which seems newer but also has some activity. Although i don't know how good it is.
What is the recommended way of using Python to communicate with SWI-prolog?
Are there perhaps other ways to accomplish this?
Maybe with another prolog engine?
I'm stuck with the Prolog language and Python because I know them best, so that would be necessary (I know for instance there are also tools for Java).
I've personally used PySWIP successfully. Here's a link to a project I did for my AI class in university in which I used PySWIP.
I think the difference is that PySWIP is a bridge (just send queries to a Prolog database and get responses) whereas PyLog seems to be an implementation of Prolog (or a built-in Prolog engine) in Python, with abstractions on Prolog code using objects.
I have no particular recommendation for you. Choose whichever you deem will suit your project best. Consider the licenses under which these libraries are published if you will need to worry about your code's license.
I am using a PC (Win7) that is void of any MS development tools. However, python 2.7 is installed on this PC. ctype module is available in this installation. (It is not IronPython. It is just plain CPython)
Now if we look at Objective-C on osx, it is possible for a C program to access the Objective-C runtime by calling objc_msgSend and a handful of other APIs (https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ObjCRuntimeRef/Reference/reference.html). It is a lot of pain and not recommended at all, but at least it is doable.
So given the constraints above (win7, no VStudio, python+ctype), is it possible for me to access the .Net runtime in a manner similar to objective-c?
is it possible for me to access the .Net runtime in a manner similar to objective-c?
The .NET Runtime can be Hosted, which allows you to access and use types directly from a native API.
That being said, there is often a simpler way to accomplish this. If the .NET type(s) you need to access are COM visible, for example, you can just directly use them via COM.
I'm investigating Google refine to speed up some of my data work -- never used it before this week, but I like a lot of what I see.
My biggest question so far is whether it's possible to call external python functions from Refine. I know you can call jython internally, but that doesn't provide access to C-based python libraries (e.g. lxml), and I have scripts elsewhere that I'd like to integrate, without lots of copy-paste or rewrite hassle.
What options are there for doing this in Refine? I'm willing to get creative -- I just want a stable, re-usable solution.
As Google Refine Wiki says:
lxml will NOT work in Jython, since lxml has C bindings for CPython (regular Python), hence will not work in Refine which is Jython / Java only, and has no CPython interpreter built-in
But you can try Google Refine Python Client Library to create projects and manipulate your data programmatically.
I'm going to mark reclosedev's answer as accepted, but there's still a litle more to the story.
The other answer to this question is that you can set up your own python-based API. For this project, I was able to set up a django app running on a local server. It only took an hour or so to build the API to my existing library.
More hassle than I'd have liked, but it fit the bill for this project without soaking up too much time.
I am about to begin a project where I will likely use PyQt or Pyside.
I will need to interface with a buggy 3rd party piece of server software that provides C++ and Java APIs. The Java APIs are a lot easier to use because you get Exceptions where with the C++ libraries you get segfaults. Also, the Python bindings to the Java APIs are automatic with Jython whereas the Python bindings for the C++ APIs don't exist.
So, how would a CPython PyQt client application be able to communicate with these Java APIs? How would you go about it?
Would you have another separate Java process on the client that serializes / pickles objects and communicates with the PyQt process over a socket?
I don't want to re-invent the wheel... is there some sort of standard interface for these types of things? Some technology I should look into? RPC, Corba, etc?
Thanks,
~Eric
If you want to maintain complete isolation and increase your robustness (the 3rd party library going down and not taking your client, and if it's buggy I would recommend that) then perhaps something like CORBA is the way forwards. Don't forget that Java comes with a CORBA implementation as standard, so you just need to generate your C proxy from the IDL.
Swig may be of interest if you want to run stuff in-process. It simplifies the binding of components in different languages. Note in particular that it generates bindings for Python and Java.
If the criteria is not reinventing the wheel, there is the SimpleXMLRPCServer and xmlrpclib modules available in the standard library. They should work in Jython too.
Other than basic python syntax, what other key areas should I learn to get a website live?
Is there a web.config in the python world?
Which libraries handle things like authentication? or is that all done manually via session cookies and database tables?
Are there any web specific libraries?
Edit: sorry!
I am well versed in asp.net, I want to branch out and learn Python, hence this question (sorry, terrible start to this question I know).
Basic Python syntax isn't half of what you need to know.
All of the Python built-in data structures.
Object-oriented design.
What python module and packages are.
The Python libraries -- almost everything you could ever want has already been written.
To name a few things.
If you've done some web development, you probably have some background in HTTP protocol, HTML, .CSS and Javascript and SQL.
You should use a framework to handle the endless collection of mundane details, like authentication. Look at Django.
Answer replaced to correspond with the updated question.
If you're already familiar with ASP.NET, the easiest way to jump into creating a website with Python is probably to look into one of the major web frameworks. Django is very popular, working through the installation guide and the tutorial will probably get you rolling pretty well.
Really though, I'd personally suggest at least learning the language itself to a basic competency level before trying to dive right into using it inside a web framework. I think you'll be trying to force yourself to learn too much at once. In terms of just learning Python, the free book Dive Into Python is always spoken of highly.
Oh, golly.
Look, this is gonna be real hard to answer because, read as you wrote it, you're missing a lot of steps. Like, you need a web server, a design, some HTML, and so on.
Are you building from the ground up? Asking about Python makes me suspect you may be using something like Zope.
Don't forget to give IronPython a try - your .NET experience can help making sense of newly learned Python idioms.
IronPython is an implementation of the Python programming language running under .NET and Silverlight. It supports an interactive console with fully dynamic compilation. It's well integrated with the rest of the .NET Framework and makes all .NET libraries easily available to Python programmers, while maintaining compatibility with the Python language.
Of course the builtins. And become familiar with the standard library (until you start to remember what's in it, I'd suggest looking through it any time you're about to implement something... It might be there already!)
You'll want some kind of framework, I'd recommend Django or TurboGears
But you also need to learn the pythonic-way. For this, open up a Python interpreter and type:
import this