Introduction¶

Work with the Webex APIs in Native Python!¶

Sure, working with the Webex APIs is easy (see developer.webex.com). They are RESTful, naturally structured, require only a simple Access Token for authentication, and the data is elegantly represented in intuitive JSON. What could be easier?

import requests

URL = 'https://api.ciscospark.com/v1/messages'
ACCESS_TOKEN = '<your_access_token>'
ROOM_ID = '<room_id>'
MESSAGE_TEXT = '<message_text>'

headers = {'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + ACCESS_TOKEN,
           'Content-type': 'application/json;charset=utf-8'}
post_data = {'roomId': ROOM_ID,
             'text': MESSAGE_TEXT}
response = requests.post(URL, json=post_data, headers=headers)
if response.status_code == 200:
    # Great your message was posted!
    message_id = response.json['id']
    message_text = response.json['text']
    print("New message created, with ID:", message_id)
    print(message_text)
else:
    # Oops something went wrong...  Better do something about it.
    print(response.status_code, response.text)

Like I said, EASY. However, in use, the code can become rather repetitive…

You have to setup the environment every time
You have to remember URLs, request parameters and JSON formats (or reference the docs)
You have to parse the returned JSON and work with multiple layers of list and dictionary indexes
When requesting lists of items, you have to deal with pagination

Enter webexpythonsdk, a simple API wrapper that wraps all of the Webex API calls and returned JSON objects within native Python objects and methods.

With webexpythonsdk, the above Python code can be consolidated to the following:

from webexpythonsdk import WebexAPI

api = WebexAPI()
try:
    message = api.messages.create('<room_id>', text='<message_text>')
    print("New message created, with ID:", message.id)
    print(message.text)
except ApiError as e:
    print(e)

webexpythonsdk handles all of this for you:

Reads your Webex access token from a WEBEX_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable
Wraps and represents all Webex API calls as a simple hierarchical tree of native-Python methods (with default arguments provided everywhere possible!)
If your Python IDE supports auto-completion (like PyCharm), you can navigate the available methods and object attributes right within your IDE
Represents all returned JSON objects as native Python objects - you can access all of the object’s attributes using native dot.syntax
Automatic and Transparent Pagination! When requesting ‘lists of objects’ from Webex, requests for additional pages of responses are efficiently and automatically requested as needed
Automatic Rate-Limit Handling Sending a lot of requests to Webex? Don’t worry; we have you covered. Webex will respond with a rate-limit response, which will automatically be caught and “handled” for you. Your requests and script will automatically be “paused” for the amount of time specified by Webex, while we wait for the Webex rate-limit timer to cool down. After the cool-down, your request will automatically be retried, and your script will continue to run as normal. Handling all of this requires zero (0) changes to your code - you’re welcome. 😎

Just know that if you are are sending a lot of requests, your script might take longer to run if your requests are getting rate limited.
Multipart encoding and uploading of local files, when creating messages with local file attachments

All of this, combined, lets you do powerful things simply:

from webexpythonsdk import WebexAPI

api = WebexAPI()

# Find all rooms that have 'webexpythonsdk Demo' in their title
all_rooms = api.rooms.list()
demo_rooms = [room for room in all_rooms if 'webexpythonsdk Demo' in room.title]

# Delete all of the demo rooms
for room in demo_rooms:
    api.rooms.delete(room.id)

# Create a new demo room
demo_room = api.rooms.create('webexpythonsdk Demo')

# Add people to the new demo room
email_addresses = ["test01@cmlccie.com", "test02@cmlccie.com"]
for email in email_addresses:
    api.memberships.create(demo_room.id, personEmail=email)

# Post a message to the new room, and upload a file
api.messages.create(demo_room.id, text="Welcome to the room!",
                    files=["https://www.webex.com/content/dam/wbx/us/images/navigation/CiscoWebex-Logo_white.png"])

That’s more than 6 Webex API calls in less than 23 lines of code (with comments and whitespace), and likely more than that since webexpythonsdk handles pagination for you automatically!

Head over to the Quickstart page to begin working with the Webex APIs in native Python!

MIT License¶

webexpythonsdk is currently licensed under the MIT Open Source License, and distributed as a source distribution (no binaries) via PyPI, and the complete source code is available on GitHub.

webexpythonsdk License¶

The MIT License (MIT)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.