This chapter presents some interesting Python recipes on web services using three different approaches, namely, XML Remote Procedure Call (XML-RPC), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and Representational State Transfer (REST). The idea behind the web services is to enable an interaction between two software components over the web through a carefully designed protocol. The interface is machine readable. Various protocols are used to facilitate the web services.

Here, we bring examples from three commonly used protocols. XML-RPC uses HTTP as the transport medium, and communication is done using XML contents. A server that implements XML-RPC waits for a call from a suitable client. The client calls that server to execute remote procedures with different parameters. XML-RPC is simpler and comes with a minimum security in mind. On the other hand, SOAP has a rich set of protocols for enhanced remote procedure calls. REST is an architectural style to facilitate web services. It operates with HTTP request methods, namely, GET(), POST(), PUT(), and DELETE(). This chapter presents the practical use of these web services protocols and styles to achieve some common tasks.