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."