suds throwing error 'type not found' consuming SOAP service

Question

I am consuming a SOAP webservice with suds (0.4). The WSDL I am using throws an error

>>> import uuid
>>> from suds.client import Client
>>> wsdl = 'https://toolkit.dnb.com/locked/resource/docs/TransactionAndMessageDefinition/ProductList.wsdl'
>>> client = Client(wsdl) 

The service I am consuming expects one parameter productListRequest, which is a complex type where you put UserId, Password and a complex type of ProductListInput.

I fill these with:

>>> productListRequest = client.factory.create('productListRequest')
>>> productListRequest.UserId = 'myusername'
>>> productListRequest.Password = 'mypassword'
>>> productListRequest.TRNUID = uuid.uuid4()
>>> ProductListInput = client.factory.create('ProductListInput')
>>> ProductListInput.DnB_DUNS_Number = ''
>>> ProductListInput.Product = 'Product Name'
>>> ProductListInput.CountryCode = 'IT'
>>> ProductListInput.TradeUp = ''
>>> ProductListInput.Reason = ''
>>> productListRequest.ProductListInput = ProductListInput

But whenever I am calling the service:

>>> print client.service.ws_ProductList(productListRequest)

I get Type not found: 'ArrayOfUPD_FLDSItem'

I am really stuck here. I have googled this error for 2 days and honestly I do not know what to do! Maybe someone with a deeper understanding of WSDL and suds can help.

So my questions:

• Is this WSDL, which I am consuming proper defined? (If it is proper defined, I will report it to the suds maintainers)

• If this WSDL is not proper defined, is there a workaround (e.g. suds schema doctor) to fix it on suds site?

• Is there a alternative Python library, which I should use?

Answer 1

At first: It does not make sense to call the product list without a DUNS-Number. The transaction gives all avaliable products to a given DUNS. If the DUNS number is left empty, you will only get a field list of the product you stated (assuming you put a valid product name into your call, not "product name").

BUT: Even by putting all parameters in, I ran into the same problem and was not able to solve it, either.

Check with DnB and make them correct the WSDL - their WSDLs are quite buggy: Note that they have simply forgotten a whole transaction in the WSDL implementation (prodOrderRequest_3 for retrieving data from the toolkit archive)

My solution is to use the XML-Version of the Toolkit for this and the other mentioned transaction. Unfortunately.

Answer 2

Suds is currently the best choice for WSDL consumption in Python. Unfortunately WSDL itself is such a complex mess that making good out of it is difficult.

Luckily Suds come with extensive logging capabilities which you can use to debug the problem and this is the first step of solving it. This earlier question answers how to enable it:

How can I output what SUDs is generating/receiving?

However, giving a complete answer for the type error would require seeing extensive logging output and/or source code, so I suggest you somehow try to narrow down the problem. To make the problem ultimately solvable a sample (non-working) schema and Python code would be nice.

(The error might hint that there is some subschema / external schema defined / missing which Suds cannot load for reason X)