[Zope-dev] Re: SOAP Support for ZOPE

[Brian Lloyd]

Hi all - having had to implement a monkey patch product
before to enable SOAP, I'd like to make a few observations
and a suggestion:

  - It is a pain to do anything with SOAP because the
    publisher has a hard-coded idea that anything xml must
    be xml-rpc

  - There is currently no easy way around this w/o monkey
    patching, which then leaves you vulnerable to future
    changes to the publisher

  - Opinions on the state of SOAP support in the Python world
    are far from unanimous - I think it would be premature to
    put a particular implementation into Zope proper

  - That said, Zope should make it possible for Cignex and
    others to provide SOAP support as add-on products without
    unreasonable contortions

So the suggestion: I think we'd be in a better place if we:

  - Fix the publisher to at least recognize a SOAP request vs.
    an xml-rpc request

  - Provide some kind of 'registration hook' so that a Product
    can register with the publisher to handle SOAP requests

  - Have the publisher hand off where appropriate to a registered
    SOAP handler if installed, else return an HTTP NotImplemented
    or similar if there is no SOAP handler

  - Apply the KISS rule: only one product can register to the be
    the SOAP handler, and resist turning this into any kind of
    grand-unified-pluggable-publisher architecture ;)

This would be minimally disruptive to the Zope core, while enabling
people interested in SOAP to evolve different solutions without
everybody having to buy into a particular approach or implementation
right now.


Brian Lloyd        brian at zope.com
V.P. Engineering   540.361.1716
Zope Corporation   http://www.zope.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: zope-dev-bounces at zope.org [mailto:zope-dev-bounces at zope.org]On
> Behalf Of Tres Seaver
> Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 1:22 PM
> To: zope-dev at zope.org
> Subject: [Zope-dev] Re: SOAP Support for ZOPE
>
>
> Florent Guillaume wrote:
> > Richard wrote:
> >
> >>On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:54 am, Aruna Kathiria wrote:
> >>
> >>>I did some work regarding SOAP support on ZOPE and published this
> >>>document on zope.org.
> >>
> >>Is there really no interest in getting SOAP support into the Zope
> >>core? I've got a guy working on some Microsoft Word stuff at the
> >>moment, and he was dumbfounded when he discovered that Zope doesn't
> >>support SOAP. In his words, "everyone supports SOAP". Sigh :)
> >
> >
> > There is probably interest, but it needs motivated people like Aruna and
> > you to push it.
> >
> >
> >>Are there any objections to getting Aruna's patches into the 2.8
> >>codebase? I'd be willing to do the work - but note I know practically
> >>nothing about SOAP - I just want to be able to use it.
> >
> >
> > One problem is that Aruna's approach introduces dependencies to external
> > modules: fpconst, and a patched SOAPy. If these can be resolved, why
> > not.
>
> Because of those dependencies, I think support "in the core" is not
> feasible.  However, I believe that it should be possible to create a
> product which solves those issues.  This product would either need to
> monkey-patch the publisher (as outlined by John Zinit earlier in the
> thread) or else register a new kind of server, which could be configured
> (like the WebDAV source server) to listen on its own port.
>
> For an example of such a Product, see "ZServerSSL",
> http://sandbox.rulemaker.net/ngps/zope/zssl/
>
> Tres.
> --
> ===============================================================
> Tres Seaver                                tseaver at zope.com
> Zope Corporation      "Zope Dealers"       http://www.zope.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Zope-Dev maillist  -  Zope-Dev at zope.org
> http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev
> **  No cross posts or HTML encoding!  **
> (Related lists -
>  http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce
>  http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
>