bad request when using python with suds for sharepoint

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18975091

Question

I am using Suds to access Sharepoint lists through soap, but I am having some trouble with malformed soap.

I am using the following code:

from suds.client import Client
from suds.sax.element import Element
from suds.sax.attribute import Attribute
from suds.transport.https import WindowsHttpAuthenticated

import logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)
logging.getLogger('suds.client').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

ntlm = WindowsHttpAuthenticated(username='somedomain\\username', password='password')
url = "http://somedomain/sites/somesite/someothersite/somethirdsite/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx?WSDL"

client = Client(url, transport=ntlm)

result = client.service.GetListCollection()
print repr(result)

Every time I run this, I get the result Error 400 Bad request. As I have debugging enabled I can see the resulting envelope:

<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:ns0="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:ns1="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
   <SOAP-ENV:Header/>
   <ns0:Body>
      <ns1:GetListCollection/>
   </ns0:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

...with this error message:

DEBUG:suds.client:http failed:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Bad Request</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" Content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></HEAD>
<BODY><h2>Bad Request</h2>
<hr><p>HTTP Error 400. The request is badly formed.</p>
</BODY></HTML>

Running the same WSDL (and raw envelope data as well) through SoapUI the request returns with values as expected. Can anyone see any obvious reason why I get the different results with Suds as SoapUI and how I can correct this?

UPDATE: after testing the exact same code on a different Sharepoint site (i.e. not a subsubsubsite with whitespace in its name) and with Java (JAX-WS, which also had issues with the same site, though, different issues) it appears as if it works as expected. As a result I wonder if one of two details may be the reason for these problems:

  • SOAP implementations have some issues with subsubsubsites in Sharepoint?
  • SOAP implementations have some issues with whitespace in its name, even if using %20 as a replacement?

I still have the need to use the original URL with those issues, so any input would be highly appreciated. I assume that since SoapUI worked with the original url, it should be possible to correct whatever is wrong.

Was it helpful?

Solution

I think I narrowed down the issue, and it is specific to suds (possibly other SOAP implementations as well). Your bullet point:

  • SOAP implementations have some issues with whitespace in its name, even if using %20 as a replacement?

That's spot on. Turning up debug logging for suds allowed me to grab the endpoint, envelope, and headers. Mimicking the exact same call using cURL returns a valid response, but suds it throws the bad request.

The issue is that suds takes your WSDL (url parameter) and parses it, but it doesn't include the URL encoded string. This leads to debug messages like this:

DEBUG:suds.transport.http:opening (https://sub.site.com/sites/Site Collection with Spaces/_vti_bin/UserGroup.asmx?WSDL)
<snip>
TransportError: HTTP Error 400: Bad Request

Piping this request through a fiddler proxy showed that it was running the request against the URL https://sub.site.com/sites/Site due to the way it parses the WSDL. The issue is that you aren't passing the location parameter to suds.client.Client. The following code gives me valid responses every time:

from ntlm3 import ntlm
from suds.client import Client
from suds.transport.https import WindowsHttpAuthenticated

# URL without ?WSDL
url = 'https://sub.site.com/sites/Site%20Collection%20with%20Spaces/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx'

# Create NTLM transport handler
transport = WindowsHttpAuthenticated(username='foo',
                                     password='bar')
# We use FBA, so this forces it to challenge us with 
# a 401 so WindowsHttpAuthenticated can take over.
msg = ("%s\\%s" % ('DOM', 'foo'))
auth = 'NTLM %s' % ntlm.create_NTLM_NEGOTIATE_MESSAGE(msg).decode('ascii')
# Create the client and append ?WSDL to the URL.
client = Client(url=(url + "?WSDL"),
                location=url,
                transport=transport)
# Add the NTLM header to force negotiation.
header = {'Authorization': auth}
client.set_options(headers=header)

One caveat: Using quote from urllib works, but you cannot encode the entire URL or it fails to recognize the URL. You are better off just doing a replace on spaces with %20.

url = url.replace(' ','%20')

Hope this keeps someone else from banging their head against the wall.

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