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What SOAP client libraries exist for Python, and where is the documentation for them? [closed]

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I've never used SOAP before and I'm sort of new to Python. I'm doing this to get myself acquainted with both technologies. I've installed SOAPlib and I've tried to read their Client documentation, but I don't understand it too well. Is there anything else I can look into which is more suited for being a SOAP Client library for Python?

Edit: Just in case it helps, I'm using Python 2.6.

Does it have to be SOAP, such as using pre-existing web services? Python's xmlrpclib is dead simple to use and I've migrated our SOAP services to XMLRPC with it. – Kirk Strauser Oct 16, 2008 at 1:03 Sometimes one just want to connect to service that is ONLY provided over SOAP so yes - good python SOAP lib is something that one will sooner or later need. One won't have any chance to convince service provider to replace SOAP with something "cleaner"... – rombarcz Sep 23, 2009 at 20:24 FYI: I opened a similar post that targets SOAP for Python 3 : stackoverflow.com/questions/7817303/… – gecco Oct 19, 2011 at 6:21

Unfortunately, at the moment, I don't think there is a "best" Python SOAP library. Each of the mainstream ones available has its own pros and cons.

Older libraries:

SOAPy : Was the "best," but no longer maintained. Does not work on Python 2.5+

ZSI : Very painful to use, and development is slow. Has a module called "SOAPpy", which is different than SOAPy (above).

"Newer" libraries:

SUDS : Very Pythonic, and easy to create WSDL-consuming SOAP clients. Creating SOAP servers is a little bit more difficult. (This package does not work with Python3. For Python3 see SUDS-py3)

SUDS-py3 : The Python3 version of SUDS

spyne : Creating servers is easy, creating clients a little bit more challenging. Documentation is somewhat lacking.

ladon : Creating servers is much like in soaplib (using a decorator). Ladon exposes more interfaces than SOAP at the same time without extra user code needed.

pysimplesoap : very lightweight but useful for both client and server - includes a web2py server integration that ships with web2py.

SOAPpy : Distinct from the abandoned SOAPpy that's hosted at the ZSI link above, this version was actually maintained until 2011, now it seems to be abandoned too.

soaplib : Easy to use python library for writing and calling soap web services. Webservices written with soaplib are simple, lightweight, work well with other SOAP implementations, and can be deployed as WSGI applications.

osa : A fast/slim easy to use SOAP python client library.

Of the above, I've only used SUDS personally, and I liked it a lot.

SOAPy and SOAPpy are actually different. I've edited to clarify, and turned the post into a community wiki. – Samat Jain May 21, 2009 at 20:16 +1 for SUDS, great library! I ran into problems using SUDS with HTTPS web services behind a proxy. Turns out it is a known Python urllib2 issue. See my answer for more details. – sstock Aug 6, 2009 at 8:35 I tried SUDs, but it went into an infinite loop when opening a WSDL; then python threw a recursion limit error. I found this open ticket regarding the issue: fedorahosted.org/suds/ticket/239 Apparently this was a library breaking bug 3 years ago, and still hasn't been fixed. – Buttons840 Feb 27, 2012 at 22:05 I've started using SUDS today for fetching data only. It handled a basic apikey auth in the soap headers without any problems, and the responses were fairly easy to parse. The documentation was also fairy decent. – saccharine Sep 6, 2013 at 0:15

I followed the advice of other answers to this question and gave SUDS a try. After using it "in anger" I must agree: SUDS is very nice! Highly recommended!

I did run into trouble calling HTTPS-based web services from behind a proxy. At the time of this writing, this affects all Python web-service clients that use urllib2 , so I'll document the solution here.

The urllib2 module shipping with python 2.6.2 and below will not issue a CONNECT to the proxy for HTTPS-over-HTTP-proxy sessions. This results in a long timeout, or if you are lucky, an error that looks like:

abort: error: error:140770FC:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:unknown protocol
This was issue1424152 on the Python bug tracker. There are patches attached to the bug report that will fix this in Python 2.x and Python 3.x. The issue is already fixed.
                Just installed it and even though I'm totally new to Python it felt very intuitive and I could send SUDS requests i minutes time. The library is great!
– Leonid
                Jun 11, 2011 at 12:28
                Do you mind updating this one. I ask because I clicked on the link, and the bug is fixed.
– tshepang
                Jun 27, 2011 at 15:12
                Fore us suds also works well.. However its very slow. Retrieving an xml soap file takes 0.5 seconds, and processing it takes 5 seconds on a dual core machine!
– TjerkW
                Sep 5, 2014 at 9:13
                I am trying to call async soap api with suds, working well but not getting any response, can someone help in that, hr my Q.: stackoverflow.com/questions/39227719/…
– Vikram Singh Chandel
                Aug 30, 2016 at 13:35
                And it also fails on a large number of WSDL files. To back that claim up - the Bing maps API's for example, some of these fail and suds can't parse them.
– user67627
                Jan 10, 2011 at 10:17
Just an FYI warning for people looking at SUDS, until this ticket is resolved, SUDS does not support the "choice" tag in WSDL:
https://fedorahosted.org/suds/ticket/342
suds and choice tag

SUDS is easy to use, but is not guaranteed to be re-entrant. If you're keeping the WSDL Client() object around in a threaded app for better performance, there's some risk involved. The solution to this risk, the clone() method, throws the unrecoverable Python 5508 bug, which seems to print but not really throw an exception. Can be confusing, but it works. It is still by far the best Python SOAP client. 
We released a new library: PySimpleSOAP, that provides support for simple and functional client/server. It goals are: ease of use and flexibility (no classes, autogenerated code or xml is required), WSDL introspection and generation, WS-I standard compliance, compatibility (including Java AXIS, .NET and Jboss WS). It is included into Web2Py to enable full-stack solutions (complementing other supported protocols such as XML_RPC, JSON, AMF-RPC, etc.).
If someone is learning SOAP or want to investigate it, I think it is a good choice to start. 
I believe soaplib has deprecated its SOAP client ('sender') in favor of suds. At this point soaplib is focused on being a web framework agnostic SOAP server ('receiver'). Currently soaplib is under active development and is usually discussed in the Python SOAP mailing list:
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/soap
suds is well maintained and updated.

UPDATE 06/2017: suds-jurko library is not updated and apparently abandoned, 
I tested zeep library but got limitations around tokens, by now just support UsernameToken, i report a bug to create timestamp token and author update the code to fix it.
Zeep start good and has good documentation , so i recently migrated my code from suds to zeep and works fine.
Soap server side:
We have TGWS, soaplib (pysimplesoap not tested) IMHO use and help soaplib must be the choice.
Best regards,
                Is there good documentation/samples for Suds-jurko? in the repo there are a few .rst files but not much in a way of documentation of how to use the library.
– ierdna
                Jun 16, 2017 at 23:12