Chapter 11. HTTP Web Services
Simply stated, HTTP web services are programmatic ways of sending and receiving data from remote servers using the operations
of HTTP directly. If you want to get data from the server, use a straight HTTP GET; if you want to send new data to the server,
use HTTP POST. (Some more advanced HTTP web service APIs also define ways of modifying existing data and deleting data, using
HTTP PUT and HTTP DELETE.) In other words, the “verbs” built into the HTTP protocol (GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE) map directly to application-level operations for receiving, sending,
modifying, and deleting data.
The main advantage of this approach is simplicity, and its simplicity has proven popular with a lot of different sites. Data
-- usually XML data -- can be built and stored statically, or generated dynamically by a server-side script, and all major
languages include an HTTP library for downloading it. Debugging is also easier, because you can load up the web service in
any web browser and see the raw data. Modern browsers will even nicely format and pretty-print XML data for you, to allow
you to quickly navigate through it.
Examples of pure XML-over-HTTP web services:
In later chapters, you'll explore APIs which use HTTP as a transport for sending and receiving data, but don't map application
semantics to the underlying HTTP semantics. (They tunnel everything over HTTP POST.) But this chapter will concentrate on
using HTTP GET to get data from a remote server, and you'll explore several HTTP features you can use to get the maximum benefit
out of pure HTTP web services.
Here is a more advanced version of the openanything module that you saw in the previous chapter:
Example 11.1. openanything.py
If you have not already done so, you can download this and other examples used in this book.
import urllib2, urlparse, gzip
from StringIO import StringIO
USER_AGENT = 'OpenAnything/1.0 +http://diveintopython.org/http_web_services/'
class SmartRedirectHandler(urllib2.HTTPRedirectHandler):
def http_error_301(self, req, fp, code, msg, headers):
result = urllib2.HTTPRedirectHandler.http_error_301(
self, req, fp, code, msg, headers)
result.status = code
return result
def http_error_302(self, req, fp, code, msg, headers):
result = urllib2.HTTPRedirectHandler.http_error_302(
self, req, fp, code, msg, headers)
result.status = code
return result
class DefaultErrorHandler(urllib2.HTTPDefaultErrorHandler):
def http_error_default(self, req, fp, code, msg, headers):
result = urllib2.HTTPError(
req.get_full_url(), code, msg, headers, fp)
result.status = code
return result
def openAnything(source, etag=None, lastmodified=None, agent=USER_AGENT):
'''URL, filename, or string --> stream
This function lets you define parsers that take any input source
(URL, pathname to local or network file, or actual data as a string)
and deal with it in a uniform manner. Returned object is guaranteed
to have all the basic stdio read methods (read, readline, readlines).
Just .close() the object when you're done with it.
If the etag argument is supplied, it will be used as the value of an
If-None-Match request header.
If the lastmodified argument is supplied, it must be a formatted
date/time string in GMT (as returned in the Last-Modified header of
a previous request). The formatted date/time will be used
as the value of an If-Modified-Since request header.
If the agent argument is supplied, it will be used as the value of a
User-Agent request header.
'''
if hasattr(source, 'read'):
return source
if source == '-':
return sys.stdin
if urlparse.urlparse(source)[0] == 'http':
request = urllib2.Request(source)
request.add_header('User-Agent', agent)
if etag:
request.add_header('If-None-Match', etag)
if lastmodified:
request.add_header('If-Modified-Since', lastmodified)
request.add_header('Accept-encoding', 'gzip')
opener = urllib2.build_opener(SmartRedirectHandler(), DefaultErrorHandler())
return opener.open(request)
try:
return open(source)
except (IOError, OSError):
pass
return StringIO(str(source))
def fetch(source, etag=None, last_modified=None, agent=USER_AGENT):
'''Fetch data and metadata from a URL, file, stream, or string'''
result = {}
f = openAnything(source, etag, last_modified, agent)
result['data'] = f.read()
if hasattr(f, 'headers'):
result['etag'] = f.headers.get('ETag')
result['lastmodified'] = f.headers.get('Last-Modified')
if f.headers.get('content-encoding', '') == 'gzip':
result['data'] = gzip.GzipFile(fileobj=StringIO(result['data']])).read()
if hasattr(f, 'url'):
result['url'] = f.url
result['status'] = 200
if hasattr(f, 'status'):
result['status'] = f.status
f.close()
return result
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