Build Powerful Web Services with Python: SOAP vs REST

A comprehensive guide to creating robust web services using Python, comparing SOAP and REST approaches

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Web services are essential building blocks of modern distributed systems. They enable applications to communicate over the internet by exchanging data as XML or JSON objects.

This article will explore two popular methods for implementing web services in Python: Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Representational State Transfer (REST).

We’ll discuss their differences, strengths, weaknesses, and when to use each approach. Finally, we’ll include updated code examples for both techniques.

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

SOAP is an XML-based messaging protocol designed for cross-platform communication between different programming languages and platforms. It uses standardized formats like WSDL (Web Service Description Language) and XSD (XML Schema Definition), providing clear definitions of functions, inputs, outputs, and error handling mechanisms.

To create a basic SOAP service using Spyne library in Python, follow these steps:

1. Install spyne via pip:

pip install spyne