Developers of Sympa

[Olivier Salaün - CRU <address@concealed>]

We go on this thread about the SOAP server in the sympa-dev ML :

address@concealed wrote:
> Steven Peterson wrote:
> > We need to expand the capabilities of sympasoap so that we can get 
> > additional information about each list, including the owner, the 
> > moderators, the subscriber count, and other items in the list 
> > config.  We would like to make the changes so that our work can be 
> > used by the rest of the sympa community, so we ask for input from 
> > other sympasoap users about which approach would be most backward 
> > compatible.
> >
> > 1) We could expand the existing 'ListType' record type to include the 
> > additional list config fields, then update complexLists service to 
> > return the more extensive ListType records in the returned array of 
> > list info.  This approach keeps the interface simple, but may break 
> > existing clients, as some clients may barf when they encounter the 
> > new properties in the new ListType record.
> >
> > 2) We could create an entirely new ExtendedListType record that has 
> > all the list config fields in it, then add a new extendedLists 
> > service that extends the functionality of complexLists but returns 
> > the ExtendedListType.  This approach
> > seems sloppy but may also be the best way to maintain backward 
> > compatibility.  
> Thanks for your message. I don't have a definitive opinion about this 
> issue. My first reaction is extend the ListType would be better. But 
> it really a problem because some will have to change there soap client 
> and they will have to do it the day they update Sympa. May be some 
> have a single client that connect to severals Sympa web server. They 
> will have to update all Sympa servers the same day ...
>
> My answer is not to the list because it want first to read others 
> answers.
>
> Olivier, what do you think about ?

The Sympa software might still evolve in the feature and I don't like 
the idea that the set of existing SOAP features should be frozen. 
Extending the 'ListType' type sounds like the proper solution and you're 
welcome to propose a patch in this way ; we'll do our best to integrate 
it into Sympa distribution. Please have a look at this page before 
coding : http://www.sympa.org/wiki/internals/developers_howto

Concerning the compatibility issues, we'll do some documentation efforts 
to warn users about the changes. We've also contacted Doriane Dussart 
who wrote the Axis Uportal SOAP client for Sympa about the consequences 
of such changes.