SOAP::Lite for Perl =================== SOAP::Lite for Perl is a collection of Perl modules which provides a simple and lightweight interface to the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) both on client and server side. To learn more about SOAP, see http://www.w3.org/TR/SOAP http://www.perfectxml.com/soap.asp http://www.w3schools.com/soap/ http://www.xml.com/pub/Guide/SOAP/ http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/0300/soap/soap.asp http://xml.apache.org/soap/ http://www.develop.com/soap/ http://www.soap-wrc.com/ http://discuss.develop.com/soap.html http://soap.weblogs.com/ http://www.soapwebservices.com/ http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/soap.html http://www.xmlrpc.com/stories/storyReader$555 http://davenet.userland.com/1998/07/14/xmlRpcForNewbies http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2000/06/27#performanceOfSoap This version of SOAP::Lite supports a subset of the SOAP 1.1 specification. See for details. FEATURES - Supports SOAP 1.1 spec. - Provides full namespace support for SOAP 1.1. - Supports XML entity encoding. - Supports header attributes. - Supports HTTPS protocol. - Supports SMTP protocol. - Provides POP3 server implementation. - Supports Basic/Digest server authentication. - Provides COM interface. - Supports blessed object references. - Contains various reusable components (modules) that can be used independently, as, for instance, SOAP::Serializer and SOAP::Deserializer. - Provides an object oriented interface for serializing/deserializing and sending/receiving SOAP packets. Support for extensibility of the serialization/deserialization architecture has been included. - Supports serialization/deserialization of sophisticated object graphs which may have cycles (a circular queue would serialize just fine, as well as $a=\$a. See tests and documentation for more examples). - Supports arrays (both serialization and deserialization with autotyping). - Custom/user-defined types (see SOAP::Data::as_ordered_hash for example). - Supports ordered hashes (as working example of user-defined data types). - Customizable auto type definitions. - Has more than 40 tests that access public test servers with different implementations: Apache SOAP, Frontier, Perl, XSLT, COM and VB6. - Has (limited) schema support (WSDL) with dynamic and stub access. - Supports Base64 encoding. - Supports out parameters binding. - Supports transparent SOAP calls with autodispatch feature. - Supports dynamic/static class/method binding. - Provides CGI/daemon server implementation. - Provides interactive shell for SOAP sessions (examples/SOAPsh.pl). - Easy services deployment. Put module in specified directory and it'll be accessible. - Has enough examples and documentation to be up and running in no time. PREREQUISITES This library has been tested by the author with Perl versions 5.005 and 5.6.0 on different platforms: Windows 98/2K, Solaris 2.6, Linux 2.2. Should run everywhere where Perl 5.004 or later runs. Some modules within this package depend on other packages that are distributed separately from Perl. It supposes that you have the following distributions installed before you install SOAP::Lite: XML::Parser Following modules will be loaded on demand only: XML::Parser::Expat (included with XML::Parser) MIME::Base64 URI (for HTTP/SMTP transport and autodispatch) HTTP::Daemon (for daemon server implementation, included with libwww-perl) Apache (for mod_perl server implementation, included with mod_perl) Net::POP3 and MIME::Parser (for POP3 server implementation) MIME::Lite (for SMTP client implementation) IO::File (for FTP client and IO server) Net::FTP (for FTP client) MIME::Parser (for MIME attachment support) Compress::Zlib (for compression support) Following modules will be used for HTTP protocol only: LWP::UserAgent (included with libwww-perl) HTTP::Request (included with libwww-perl) HTTP::Header (included with libwww-perl) HTTP::Status (included with libwww-perl) Crypt::SSLeay (for HTTPS/SSL transfer) These modules should be available on CPAN. INSTALLATION You install SOAP::Lite as you would install any perl module library, by running these commands: if you have CPAN.pm installed and are connected to the Internet perl -MCPAN -e shell > install SOAP::Lite or even perl -MCPAN -e 'install SOAP::Lite' otherwise perl Makefile.PL make make test make install DOCUMENTATION See lib/SOAP/Lite.pm for an overview of the library. Documentation is included in modules and scripts. These are normally converted to manual pages and installed as part of the "make install" process. You should also be able to use the 'perldoc' utility to extract and read documentation from the module files directly. LIMITATIONS No support for multidimensional, partially transmitted and sparse arrays (however arrays of arrays are supported, as well as any other data structures, and you can add your own implementation with SOAP::Data). Limited support for WSDL schema. SUPPORT Questions about how to use this library should be directed to the SOAP mailing list (http://discuss.develop.com/soap.html). Bug reports and suggestions for improvements can also be sent there. This mailing list is also the place for general discussions and development of the SOAP protocol itself. Feel free to send mail directly to author with your comments, suggestions, bug reports and complaints. AVAILABILITY You can download the latest version SOAP::Lite for Unix or SOAP::Lite for Win32 from http://www.geocities.com/paulclinger/soap.html. SOAP::Lite should be available also from CPAN. COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2000-2001 Paul Kulchenko. All rights reserved. This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. AUTHOR Paul Kulchenko (paulclinger@yahoo.com)