[Fedora-suds-list] Null/optional items in complex types

[Martin Aspeli]

Hi Jeff,

On 7 May 2010 00:32, Jeff Ortel <jortel at redhat.com> wrote:

>>> An /empty/ (nil) element<middleName xsi:nil="1"/>  contained in the
>>> document
>>> is represented in the unmarshalled object as an attribute with a value =
>>> None.  But, this element must be defined in the xsd as<xs:element
>>> xs:nillable="1"/>.
>>
>> Okay. I suspect our WSDL doesn't do this. Maybe it should.
>>
>>> An /empty/ (non-nil) element<middleName/>  contained in the document is
>>> represented in the unmarshalled object as an attribute with a value = ''.
>>>  None (nil) must be represented in the document with xsi:nil="1".
>>
>> That's actually seems entirely wrong to me. The WSDL has specified a
>> type for this attribute. In the example below, the attribute is of a
>> type 'address', another complex type. For that to be a string is just
>> plain wrong, and makes for some pretty awkward duck typing.
>
> Sorry, I should have been more specific here.  We were talking about
> <middleName/> which is an xs:string.  Only empty xs:string elements are
> interpreted as ''.  All other types such as (int, bool, custom, ..) which
> cannot by definition be ('') - will be interpreted as (None) unless a
> default is specified in the XSD.

Ok, that may be a bug then (or more weirdness in the WSDL). We have an
element like <address /> in the response and it's coming back as "".
When it's set (so we get <address><street>...</street>...</address>),
it comes back as the correct complex data structure.

> This is uglier but safer:
>
> key = 'middlename'
> if key in response:
>  session[key] = response[key]
> else:
>  session[key] = None

Ah, I didn't realise it supported __getitem__ as well as __getattr__.
Does it also support .get()?

Cheers,
Martin