Using the Workday API with Python and the suds client library

gistfile1.py

import sys

from suds import client
from suds.wsse import Security, UsernameToken
from suds.sax.text import Raw
from suds.sudsobject import asdict
from suds import WebFault

'''
Given a Workday Employee_ID, returns the last name of that employee.

I had trouble finding working examples online of interacting with the Workday SOAP API
via Python - both the authentication piece and data retrieval. It turns out to be very simple,
but it took a while to come up with due to scant documentation, so posting here in case
anyone finds it helpful.

The most common SOAP lib for Python is suds, but suds has fallen out of maintenance as
SOAP has fallen out of favor over the past 5-10 years.
suds is officially replaced by suds-jurko, which is now part of Fedora:

https://bitbucket.org/jurko/suds
https://fedorahosted.org/suds/wiki/Documentation

pip install suds-jurko
'''

# Uncomment for full debug output:
# import logging
# logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)
# logging.getLogger('suds.client').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# logging.getLogger('suds.transport').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# logging.getLogger('suds.xsd.schema').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# logging.getLogger('suds.wsdl').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

# Fully credentialed service user with access to the Human Resources API
username = 'username@yourtenant'
password = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'

wsdl_url = 'https://wd5-impl-services1.workday.com/ccx/service/[yourtenant]/Human_Resources/v24.1?wsdl'
Employee_ID = '123456'  # Replace with a known user ID in your tenant
client = client.Client(wsdl_url)

# Wrapping our client call in Security() like this results in submitting
# the auth request with PasswordType in headers in the format WD expects.
security = Security()
token = UsernameToken(username, password)
security.tokens.append(token)
client.set_options(wsse=security)

# The workflow is, generate an XML element containing the employee ID, then post
# that element to the Get_Workers() method in the WSDL as an argument.
# We could do this with two suds calls, having it generate the XML from the schema,
# but here I'm creating the POST XML manually and submitting it via suds's `Raw()` function.
xmlstring = '''
<ns0:Worker_Reference>
    <ns0:ID ns0:type="Employee_ID">{id}</ns0:ID>
</ns0:Worker_Reference>
'''.format(id=Employee_ID)

xml = Raw(xmlstring)

try:
    result = client.service.Get_Workers(xml)
except WebFault as e:
    # Employee ID probably doesn't exist.
    print(e)
    sys.exit()

# ===================
# That's essentially all you need. Everything below is just response parsing.
# ===================


# Converts the unusually formatted response object to standard Python dictionary.
# You'll probably want to move this into a utils.py and import it.
def recursive_asdict(d):
    """Convert Suds object into serializable format."""
    out = {}
    for k, v in asdict(d).iteritems():
        if hasattr(v, '__keylist__'):
            out[k] = recursive_asdict(v)
        elif isinstance(v, list):
            out[k] = []
            for item in v:
                if hasattr(item, '__keylist__'):
                    out[k].append(recursive_asdict(item))
                else:
                    out[k].append(item)
        else:
            out[k] = v
    return out

worker_dict = recursive_asdict(result)
worker = worker_dict['Response_Data']['Worker'][0]['Worker_Data']
lname = worker['Personal_Data']['Name_Data']['Legal_Name_Data']['Name_Detail_Data']['Last_Name']

print(lname)

I found this very helpful. Thank you!

oh this might really help me as well. Wish workday had something like simple-salesforce

Did you try using a factory? You're constructing the XML, but I think in suds you can use the factory to get a type.

request = client.factory.create('ns0:Worker_Reference')

thanks. this really helped me today.

I recently discovered a helpful step:

Run the task "Public Web Services." From the resulting list, find the functional area that your desired web service is in (in our case, Human Resources). From the Related Actions, choose Web Service -> View WSDL. Scroll ALL THE WAY to the bottom of the resulting WSDL and you will find an XML tag called "soapbind:address" with an attribute called "location".

Add "?wsdl" to the end of the URL in "location," and that will be the URL to which you need to make your SOAP request.

Unfortunately, in my case that was already the URL I was using to make my call. So I still don't know why I can't call the web service from Python, but I at least know that my URL is correct.

thanks, got me going on a ruby version