How to use it

Installation

PyXB 1.2.x requires Python version 2.6 or higher (including 3.x as of PyXB 1.2.4). Among other things the implementation relies on decorators (PEP 318) like @classref that are not present in earlier versions. The distribution is tested with the latest release in the Python version 2.6, 2.7, and 3.4 series prior to release.

PyXB is distributed through SourceForge. As of the 1.1.4 release, separated bundles are no longer distributed. The source distribution includes pre-built bindings for the common (core XML), WS-* (web services), and SAML (Security Assertion Markup Languge) bundles, as well as the user and API documentation. The OpenGIS bundle infrastructure is present, but due to the size of the bindings and archives is not pre-built.

Install in the usual manner:

python setup.py install

You can test the distribution with:

python setup.py test

which will run all the unit tests. Some of them will print warnings and other noise, but if at the end they all pass, don’t worry about it.

If you need more help with installation, see http://docs.python.org/install/index.html.

Generating Bindings

The pyxbgen script is used to translate XML schema and WSDL documents into Python data bindings. There are two key components to generating bindings:

  • The URI to the definition of the data structures. This can be a URL, or a path to a local file.
  • The module path into which the binding will be installed. This is the path that users of the binding will import.

There are many additional parameters; see Generating Binding Classes and pyxbgen Command Line Options.

WSDL Functions

The pyxbwsdl script is used to examine and operate on WSDL definition documents. In this release, it retrieves the WSDL document specified by the URI passed as an argument, and prints the available services with their operations and parameters. For example:

vmfed9[343]$ pyxbwsdl http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl
Need to dynamically create schema
Importing pyxb.standard.bindings.soap
Attempting to load a namespace from /home/pab/pyxb/dev/pyxb/standard/bindings/raw/wsdl.wxs
Attempting to load a namespace from /home/pab/pyxb/dev/pyxb/standard/bindings/raw/soapenc.wxs
Attempting to load a namespace from /home/pab/pyxb/dev/pyxb/standard/bindings/raw/soap.wxs
Service: GoogleSearchService
  Port GoogleSearchPort at http://api.google.com/search/beta2
    doGetCachedPage (at action=urn:GoogleSearchAction)
      Input: typens:doGetCachedPage
      Output: typens:doGetCachedPageResponse
    doSpellingSuggestion (at action=urn:GoogleSearchAction)
      Input: typens:doSpellingSuggestion
      Output: typens:doSpellingSuggestionResponse
    doGoogleSearch (at action=urn:GoogleSearchAction)
      Input: typens:doGoogleSearch
      Output: typens:doGoogleSearchResponse

Currently, this is an unmaintained example. In the future, this script may provide a more powerful display of available services, and perhaps support for generating functions which interact with the service using the appropriate encoding.