Sample code for dealing with REST apis

webapi.py

import urllib
import re

class WebApiOpener(urllib.FancyURLopener):
    '''
    Provides a way for HTTP Basic authentication to take place without
    prompting the user for a username and password like FancyURLopener
    would.
    '''
    def __init__(self, username, password):
        urllib.FancyURLopener.__init__(self,{})
        self.username = username
        self.password = password
        
    def prompt_user_passwd(self, host, realm):
        return (self.username,self.password)

def webcall(**apiargs):
    '''
    Decorator that is used to create a python function that communicates with
    a RESTful web service. The function it generates will be able to to do HTTP
    basic authorization. The generated function only accepts a keyword 
    arguments. The following are reserved arguments:
        auth_username, string optional, only needed if web service needs 
        basic HTTP auth
        auth_password, string optional, only needed if web service needs
        basic HTTP auth
    All other arguments will be used to first replace variables within the url
    and the remaining arguments will be passed as part of the parameter string.
    Take a look at the documentation below and the examples to get an idea of 
    how to define variables within the url string. 
    
    webcall Arguments: apiargs, keyword list of arguments
        apiargs['url'], string, The url of the web service. Specify variables 
        for within the url like this: {var_name=default_value} or {var_name}. 
        These will be filled in when the user actually calls the decorated 
        function.
        
        apiargs['method'], string optional, Defaults to GET if not defined. If
        it is defined to something besides GET it will use POST. 
        
    Example:
        #Here we define a call to twitter:
        @webcall(url='http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.{format=json}', method='GET')
        def friends_timeline(): pass
        
        #returns a a json string for this specific twitter call
        friends_timeline(auth_username='bob', auth_password='password')
        
        #Looking at the twitter documentation we see that this takes in other
        #parameters like since, since_id, count, page.
        #we will also get the RSS formatted response and limit it to two
        friends_timeline(auth_username='bob', auth_password='password', count=2, format='rss')
    '''
    method = apiargs.get('method','GET')
    patter_obj = re.compile("\{[^\}]+\}")
    def dec(fn):
        def convert_url(url, replace_dict):
            for match in patter_obj.finditer(url):
                #figure if the key is in the dict if not and there is
                #no default value then don't replace and continue on
                tmp = match.group()[1:-1]
                pair = tmp.split('=')
                #if there is a default value and key not in dict use default
                if len(pair) > 1 and not replace_dict.has_key(pair[0]):
                    url = url.replace(match.group(), pair[1])
                elif len(pair) > 0 and replace_dict.has_key(pair[0]):
                    url = url.replace(match.group(), replace_dict[pair[0]])
                    #this allow for a {key} to only be user once but this could
                    #be changed in the future
                    del(replace_dict[pair[0]])
            return url
        
        def new(**kwargs):
            '''
            auth_username and auth_password are reserved
            '''
            opener = WebApiOpener(kwargs.get('auth_username',''),
                kwargs.get('auth_password',''))
            if kwargs.has_key('auth_username'): del(kwargs['auth_username'])
            if kwargs.has_key('auth_password'): del(kwargs['auth_password'])
            url = convert_url(apiargs['url'], kwargs)
            params = urllib.urlencode(kwargs)
            if method == 'GET':
                stream = opener.open(url + "?" + params)
            else:
                stream = opener.open(url, params)
            response = stream.read()
            return response
        return new
    return dec

'''
A set of example functions from pownce and twitter
'''

@webcall(url='http://twitter.com/statuses/public_timeline.{format=json}')
def public_timeline(): pass

@webcall(url='http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.{format=json}', method='GET')
def friends_timeline(): pass

@webcall(url='http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.{format=json}', method='GET')
def user_timeline(): pass

@webcall(url='http://api.pownce.com/2.0/note_lists/{username}.{format=json}', method='GET')
def pownce_note_list(): pass

@webcall(url='http://api.pownce.com/2.0/send/link.{format=json}', method='POST')
def pownce_send_link(): pass