Wed, 28 Nov 2012
SOAP::Lite
Today's daily WTF goes to the SOAP::Lite CPAN package and its non-configurability and mis-design.
For example, look at this:
HTTP Basic authentication is accomplished by overriding the get_basic_credentials suboutine in LWP::UserAgent (which SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client is a subclass):
BEGIN {
sub SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::get_basic_credentials {
return 'username' => 'password';
}
}
So apparently the only way how to use Basic authentication is to override
a global function in some foreign namespace. And what to do when I want to
use two SOAP servers with two sets of credentials inside a single application?
There are more similar "features" in SOAP::Lite. For example, tracing can
only be set up globally in compile-time, or by manually calling ->import().
My dear lazyweb, is there a SOAP module with cleaner design?
UPDATE 2012/11/28: Tracing
FWIW, it is probably easier and cleaner to do both basic authentication
and tracing at the transport level - the transport module here is
LWP::UserAgent (thanks Adelton for the hint!), so for example handlers described in the LWP::UserAgent manpage work:
$soap->transport->add_handler(
request_prepare => sub {
shift->authorization_basic($login, $pass);
},
);
$soap->transport->add_handler(
request_send => sub { print STDERR shift->content; },
);
$soap->transport->add_handler(
response_done => sub { print STDERR shift->content; },
);
I wonder why the SOAP::Lite manpages suggest such dirty ways
of handling this (and I have not even started mentioning things
like $SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::USERAGENT_CLASS global
variable; ugh)
3 replies for this story:
Adelton wrote:
From man page: Because "SOAP::Client" inherits from "LWP::UserAgent", you can use any of "LWP::UserAgent"'s proxy settings. Can't you really apply the same to the ->credentials call? Eg, $soap->transport->credentials($netloc, $realm, $uname, $pass); ?
Adelton wrote:
By the way, who is holding a gun to your head to force you to use SOAP?
Yenya wrote: Re: Adelton
Well, why TF they have "redefine the get_basic_credential" in the POD as their prefered way of handling basic auth then? (ISDS is the gun holder there, but fortunately this is not my job, I just tried to help one of my colleagues :-)