Using XML/RPC to interface with the Horde API using Python

You can easily use Python to communicate with Horde through XML/RPC. Recent versions of Python have a built-in library "xmlrpclib" which even supports SSL (the "https://" protocol) and authentication! Below you find an example which accesses Kronolith's API to enumerate and download calendars. You can do similar things with other Horde modules.

Look at the modulename/lib/api.php files in the Horde distribution to see which APIs you can use.

Note regarding SOAP: it is also possible to communicate with Horde's SOAP API using the Python library "SOAPpy", but SOAP doesn't offer any inherent advantages over XML-RPC when dealing with Horde's API.

# 
# Horde XML-RPC with Python Example
#
# This is a simple example which shows how to communicate with Horde through
# the XML-RPC interface using the Python programming language.
#
# It enumerates all calendars a user has read access to and saves them to
# the harddisk as VCALENDAR files for backup purposes.
#

import xmlrpclib

############################### User settings ###############################

# The user name on the Horde server.
# When using imp authentication, always use the _full_ email address here!
# When using SQL authentication, just use your login name
username = "joe.user@my-server.com"
# username = "joe.user"

# The password of this Horde user
password = "secret"

# Protocol to use for connection ("http" or "https")
protocol = "https"

# Server host name (and directory, if needed)
hostname = "horde.my-server.com"
# hostname = "www.my-server.com/horde"

############################## End of settings ##############################

url = "%s://%s:%s@%s/rpc.php" % (protocol, username, password, hostname)

print "Connecting to URL '%s'..." % url
server = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy(url, verbose=0)

print "Retrieving list of calendars..."

calendars = server.calendar.listCalendars(False, 4) # "read permission"

for calendarKey in calendars:
    print "Downloading calendar %s..." % calendarKey

    content = server.calendar.exportCalendar(calendarKey, "text/calendar")

    filename = calendarKey + ".ics"

    print "Writing file '%s'..." % filename

    f = file(filename, "wt")
    f.write(content.encode('utf-8'))
    f.close()

print "Done."