[Zope] Re: Sending XML straight down to a zope

[Jonathan]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jonathan" <dev101 at magma.ca>
To: "Peter Bengtsson" <peter at fry-it.com>
Cc: <zope at zope.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Zope] Re: Sending XML straight down to a zope


>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Peter Bengtsson" <peter at fry-it.com>
> To: "Tres Seaver" <tseaver at palladion.com>
> Cc: <zope at zope.org>
> Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 1:09 PM
> Subject: Re: [Zope] Re: Sending XML straight down to a zope
>
>
>>
>>
>> Tres Seaver wrote:
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>
>>> Peter Bengtsson wrote:
>>>> I'm trying to send an XML straight into Zope without specifying it as
>>>> a parameter and with a Content-Length. It seems that Zope's mapply
>>>> function or whatever it's called digests the raw http body and tries
>>>> to turn it into parameters?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Here's the code on the Zope server (uploadExpenseXML()):
>>>> def uploadExpenseXML(self):
>>>>    return str(self.REQUEST.form.keys())
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Here's the dummy code that sends the XML into my Zope:
>>>>
>>>> xml_content = open('validxmlfile.xml').read()
>>>> http = httplib.HTTP("localhost", 8080)
>>>> http.putrequest("POST", "/uploadExpenseXML")
>>>> http.putheader("User-Agent", "Simple")
>>>> http.putheader("Host", "localhost")
>>>> http.putheader("Content-Length", "%d" % len(xml_content))
>>>> http.endheaders()
>>>> http.send(xml_content)
>>>> reply, message, headers = http.getreply()
>>>> print http.getfile().read()
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The result I get is:
>>>> ['<?xml version']
>>>>
>>>> If I debug the value of that single REQUEST.form variable, it starts
>>>> like this:
>>>> '"1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="yes" ?>\n<XMLExpense
>>>> Version="1.0">
>>>>
>>>> Obviously, one solution would be to ask the XML sending company to not
>>>> post it like this but instead post it by parameter which I know will
>>>> work.
>>>> But, what if I can't change their minds?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> PS. When faced with the same problem a long time ago I ended up
>>>> writing a mod_python app running one a different port that converted
>>>> the http post from mod_python into a parameter based http post. I
>>>> don't want to have to do that again.
>>>
>>> Stock Zope can only handle POST request with XML payloads if they
>>> conform to the XMLRPC spec:  they must have the 'Content-type' header of
>>> 'text/xml', and the document must be encoded as an xmlrpc request.
>>>
>>> If you can get the vendor to use a PUT request instead of a POST, you
>>> could process the result inside a custom object'c 'PUT' method.
>>> Otherwise, you are going to need to create a custom derivative of
>>> ZPublisher.HTTPRequest, and override its 'processInputs' to handle the
>>> vendor's non-standard dump.  You could make that server listen on a
>>> different port, for instance (I'm guessing you can tell them what URL to
>>> POST to, right?)
>>>
>>
>> Cool. Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried to make them change the way 
>> they post it to me and if that's not possible I'll consider your advice 
>> about either PUT or digging into ZPublisher which I was hoping not to 
>> have to do.
>
> As an alternative strategy, how about:
>
> i) set up a url just for this problem user
> ii) us apache rewrite to redirect to a non-zope cgi script
> iii) use the cgi script to 'fix' the xml
> iv) do a redirect with the fixed xml to a 'zope' url

Sorry, 'redirect' is the wrong terminology, you would have to do an RPC call 
or use something like wget, urllib, etc to feed the new xml data to your 
zope app, and then return the response (or a response) to the originator.


Jonathan