DESCRIPTION

A framework that helps automate the Web service interaction offered by HP Project and Portfolio Management(aka - HPPPM).HPPPM is an industry wide tool that is used to standardize, manage and capture the execution of a project and operational activities.For more on HPPPM refer the online documentation at HP.HPPPM offers Web Service operations to various interfacing applications involved in a project to talk to each other.HPPPM offers solutions for various activities of an organization viz - application portfolio, demand, financial and so on.This framework currently supports Demand Management only.

The framework is built up on 3 modules that have a designated task to do:

field_parser - A Higher Order Python parser meant to parse the input fields that will be used in creating the Web service request.This module is generic and can be used by others after tweaking as per need. error_handler - Performs command line parsing, validation and error/info extraction.
demand_management - Creates the Web Service request and does an HTTP post to the Web service.

All the above modules offer utilities/methods/functions to the outside world.The framework is typically meant to run via a wrapper script that uses the utilities offered.A sample wrapper script is bundled along with this distribution under the bin dir.

SYNOPSIS

Command Call:

DETAILS

A little knowledge in how HPPPM works is absolutely necessary if you intend to use this framework to automate webservice calling for you.In HPPPM each work item is designated as a request and is similar in concept to a ticket in many ticketing systems.A request in HPPPM is made up of request type, request header type and workflow.The request type and header are made up of request fields, validations, rules, security and statuses.The workflow is the request component that gets activated once the request is submitted.The workflow is made up various sub components that are classified as Executional, Decisional, Conditional and SubWorkflows.The Decisional subcompnents are the trigger points for user action and they in turn trigger the Executional and/or Conditional sub components as governed by the business logic.Please note that all fields have a unique token name through which it is referenced internally and also in the Webservice call.

METHOD/FUNCTIONS

Class DemandManagement in demand_management module: create_request(self, inputs)

Create request from inputs passed using templates

post_request(self, url, request, host=None, port=None)

POSTs the request to the url passed in.Tries to extract the host and port from the url if host and port are not passed in.Checks if the web service url is available before posting the request.

Class ErrorHandler in error_handler module: check_url_availability(self, url)

Tests service URL for accessibility.Input is url to test and returns Success or Failure.

extract(self, resp, to_extract)

Extracts the value between to_extract tags present in resp. The return value is a dictionary with key as the to_extract element and value as its extracted value.

get_current_oper(self)

List current operation

get_inputs(self, operation=None)

Lists types inorder to perform the operation.If operation is not passed or is None returns all the operations supported along with the types for each.

get_reqd_inputs(self, operation=None)

Lists must have types inorder to perform the operation.If operation is not passed or is None returns all the operations supported along with the mandatory types for each. for e.g. - for createRequest operation the input fields must have requestType details.

get_supported_ops(self)

List supported operations

validate_inputs(self, fields, ignore_types=[])

Checks if the required types need in order to perform the operation successfully are present or not.

validate_read_cmdargs(self, cmdargs)

python bin/hpppm_demand_management.py -o createRequest -u user -p password -f data/createRequest.data -c cfg/logging.conf

-o or --operation is the webservice operation being performed
-u or --user user authorized to perform web service operation
-p or --password user's password
-f or --fields location of file containing input fields that will be used to create the web service request.Instead of a path this can also be a string containing the input fields.A sample data file for each web service operation has been bundled along with distribution under data dir.
-c or --logconfig location to the configuration file that drives logging behavior.
-h or --help or -? display help.

Utilites and typical usage:

validate_tokens(self, fields=[])

Checks if the operation being performed supports tokens or not. If no tokens are needed the method returns 0.Performs the following checks on tokens as well -All field tokens must be all caps. Token prefixes (REQD, REQ, UD, T, VP, P) must be one of the specified types.All tokens can contain only alphanumeric characters and _ (underscore).Input is input fields and output is Success or Failure.

field_parser module: extractor(tokens, all=[], what=None, how=None, ignore=[])

Extract tokens embedded between specific tags.One can extract tokens between a specific tag or ask for all tokens embedded between all tags of interest.

parser(inp, extract, sep=r'"\s+?"', wo='|<|"|\'', it=[], ig=[])

Intended interface to the outside unsuspecting world.Takes in the raw input, interested tags, token separator(regexp), unwanted text in tokens(regexp), unwanted tokens and all unwanted tokens between specific tags.

tokenizer(input, weedout, split_on=r'"\s+?"', ignore=[])

Convert raw input string into units of interest.Weedout and ignore text not needed.

weeder(weed='|<|"|\'')

Sanitize input - remove weeds/unwanted text