The SSOAP package

This package provides a client-side SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) mechanism for S. It aims to provide a high-level interface for S users to invoke SOAP methods provided by a SOAP server. Conversion from S arguments to SOAP representation and of SOAP results to S objects is intended to be both transparent and extensible.

The current version has facilities for reading WSDL (Web Service Description Language) files and creating S functions from such files to programmatically create S bindings for a SOAP server's methods. This currently works for KEGG which provides an automated package similar to the BioConductor package KEGGSOAP. There are more details to add to make this entirely general, but the basis is already present.

The package is an example of using XML, but will be useful in its own right. The original versions of this package used their own HTTP communication mechanism. The more recent versions use the RCurl package which is a significant improvement in terms of performance, flexibility and thoroughness.

Download

SSOAP_0.4-8.tar.gz
Installation should be simple since there is no native (i.e. C or Fortran) code and no third party libraries. You will need the XML and RCurl packages. See the instructions for installing these.

Documentation

  • A preliminary users manual.
  • The R manual for this package.
  • Examples
    Directory containing several examples.
  • Changes
  • (Partial) Todo list.
    • Duncan Temple Lang <duncan@wald.ucdavis.edu>
    Last modified: Mon Feb 11 09:40:21 NZDT 2008