Doing anything with SOAP is a pain without a WSDL, which is the case with Zimbra. All of the Howtos I found about SOAP and ruby either required a WSDL or making several classes in a special, undocumented way to trick a SOAP::RPC::Driver instance into working. Both were unacceptable. After much hardship, I found an easier to read way to do SOAP without an WSDL in ruby, by building SOAP::Elements myself. Here is the code, documented to be easy to read, use, and extend.
# Incomplete library for interacting with Zimbra # # require 'zimbra' # # host = 'zimbra.tylerlesmann.com' # user = 'root' # passwd = 'hard_password' # creds = Zimbra.authenticate(host, user, passwd) # usercreds = Zimbra.masquerade(host, creds.authToken, 'tlesmann') # Zimbra.createappointment(host, usercreds.authToken, # Time.local(2009, 6, 26), 'Make a blog post', 'Maybe some Java', [ # '/home/tlesmann/Documents/java.png', # '/home/tlesmann/Documents/tutorial.pdf', # ]) require 'net/http' require 'net/https' require 'soap/element' require 'soap/rpc/driver' require 'soap/processor' require 'soap/streamHandler' require 'soap/property' require 'zimbra/multipart' module Zimbra # Builds and sends AuthRequest to a provided Zimbra host. # # Returns a SOAP::Mapping instance, with an authToken attribute def self.authenticate(host, name, password) header = SOAP::SOAPHeader.new body = SOAP::SOAPBody.new(element('AuthRequest', nil, { 'xmlns' => 'urn:zimbraAdmin', }, [ element('name', name), element('password', password), ] )) envelope = SOAP::SOAPEnvelope.new(header, body) return send_soap(envelope, host) end # Builds and sends CreateAppointmentRequest to a provided Zimbra host. The # attachments argument expects a list of filename strings. # # Returns a SOAP::Mapping instance def self.createappointment(host, authToken, start, subject, description='', attachments=[]) header = SOAP::SOAPHeader.new context = element('context', nil, {'xmlns' => 'urn:zimbra'}, [ element('authToken', authToken) ]) header.add('context', context) aids = [] for attachment in attachments aids << upload_attachment(host, authToken, attachment) end if aids.empty? attach = nil else attach = element('attach', nil, { 'aid' => aids.join(",") }) end body = SOAP::SOAPBody.new(element('CreateAppointmentRequest', nil, { 'xmlns' => 'urn:zimbraMail' }, [ element('m', nil, {}, [ element('inv', nil, {}, [ element('comp', nil, { 'status' => 'CONF', 'allDay' => 1, 'fb' => 'F', 'name' => subject, 'noBlob' => 1, }, [ datetime('s', start), datetime('e', start), element('descHtml', description), element('alarm', nil, { 'action' => 'DISPLAY' }, [ element('trigger', nil, {}, [ element('rel', nil, { 'm' => 1 }) ]), element('desc', subject), ] ), ] ), ]), attach ]), ] )) envelope = SOAP::SOAPEnvelope.new(header, body) send_soap(envelope, host) end # builds SOAP::SOAPElement with tag name with a *d* attribute of the # provided ruby Time def self.datetime(name, time) return element(name, nil, {'d' => time.strftime("%Y%m%d")}) end # builds SOAP::SOAPElements the way SOAP::SOAPElement constructor _should_ # # element('AuthRequest', nil, # { # 'xmlns' => 'urn:zimbraAdmin', # }, # [ # element('name', 'whoa'), # element('password', 'man'), # ] # ) # # The returned SOAP::SOAPElement converted to XML would be: # # <AuthRequest xmlns="urn:zimbraAdmin"> # <name>whoa</name> # <password>man</password> # </AuthRequest> def self.element(name, value=nil, attrs={}, children=[]) element = SOAP::SOAPElement.new(name, value) element.extraattr.update(attrs) for child in children if child element.add(child) end end return element end # Builds and sends DelegateAuth Request to a provided Zimbra host. The # authToken must be that of an admin! The account arg is nothing fancy, just # the username of the user to spoof. # # Returns a SOAP::Mapping instance, with an authToken attribute def self.masquerade(host, authToken, account) header = SOAP::SOAPHeader.new context = element('context', nil, {'xmlns' => 'urn:zimbra'}, [ element('authToken', authToken) ]) header.add('context', context) body = SOAP::SOAPBody.new(element('DelegateAuthRequest', nil, { 'xmlns' => 'urn:zimbraAdmin' }, [ element('account', account, { 'by' => 'name', }) ] )) envelope = SOAP::SOAPEnvelope.new(header, body) return send_soap(envelope, host) end # Marshals SOAP::Envelopes and sends them to a given Zimbra host # # Returns response as a SOAP::Mapping instance def self.send_soap(envelope, host) url = 'https://' + host + ':7071/service/admin/soap/' stream = SOAP::HTTPStreamHandler.new(SOAP::Property.new) request_string = SOAP::Processor.marshal(envelope) puts request_string if $DEBUG request = SOAP::StreamHandler::ConnectionData.new(request_string) response_string = stream.send(url, request).receive_string puts response_string if $DEBUG env = SOAP::Processor.unmarshal(response_string) return SOAP::Mapping.soap2obj(env.body.root_node) end # Uploads file to given Zimbra host # # Returns a string containing the Zimbra attachment id. These attachments are # only accessible to the user that uploaded them. def self.upload_attachment(host, authToken, filename) params = Hash.new file = File.open(filename, "rb") params["attachment"] = file mp = Multipart::MultipartPost.new query, headers = mp.prepare_query(params) file.close headers['Cookie'] = 'ZM_AUTH_TOKEN=' + authToken url = URI.parse('https://' + host + '/service/upload') client = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port) client.use_ssl = true response = client.post(url.path + '?fmt=raw', query, headers) return response.body.split(',')[2].strip.slice(1..-2) end end
Note: I would have done this in python, if it were not needed for an existing rails application. ;)

Would it have been easier in python?
For me it would have easier because I have more experience with python.
SOAP4R and SOAPpy are similar in functionality and ease of use. Both make SOAP more complex than it needs to be.
There is a PHP version of this class?
There seems to be a similar and more complete php api here:
http://code.google.com/p/zimbra-api-php/
This is awesome! Thank you for posting it, I'm new to SOAP and this was VERY helpful. The requests, however, are not sending messages to the attendees. It looks like they should be added just beneath the 'm' element, but I cant seem to make it work. Any ideas or suggestions? I'll send you my code if that would help!
Thanks again!
Brad
That's how it is designed to work in this case. This piece of code was for placing service termination events in the calendars of employees doing the terminating. It was requested that the normal method of using ics be avoided to reduce the noise to signal ratio of the terminators' email inboxes. If you want the owners of the calendars to get messages, it is much easier to send an ics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar
Is it ok to post this code out on Github? I'd like to try to expand it a bit so I can modify account attributes via SOAP. Maybe make it a gem if I can figure that out.
Matt
That's fine. Post a link too. :)
Hmmm...looks like there already is one. Just found this...
http://github.com/magec/rzimbra
I've forked it and am going to try to make it a gem.