README for rhnapi python module.

INTRODUCTION

This directory contains a number of python scripts that together make up an
(almost) complete abstraction of the RHN (Hosted and Satellite) XMLRPC API.

Due to the divergence of the 2 codebases, there are no guarantees that this
will work at all for RHN Hosted without a little TLC in some places.

This is under fairly heavy development and is currently being updated to
work with RHN satellite 5.4 (which added a huge number of new API calls)

DESIGN

The API module is split into multiple files (see module contents below).
The main RHN API session class (rhnapi.rhnSession) is in the __init__.py file.
An instance of this is used by all the other methods defined in the various files.
see the USAGE part later


MODULE CONTENTS

* __init__.py
The main rhnSession class defnition with helper functions
from the parent directory of this one,
pydoc rhnapi
should give you the lowdown.

Each of the following files provides one of the major namespaces in the API.
Where possible I have collapsed the namespaces as they were extremely complicated.
i.e. channel includes channel.software etc ec

* activationkey.py
* api.py
* channel.py
* configchannel.py
* distchannel.py
* errata.py
* kickstart.py
* packages.py
* preferences.py
* proxy.py
* satellite.py
* systemconfig.py
* systemgroup.py
* system.py
* user.py


utils.py
The utils submodule was intended to allow me to add custom functionality to the module

USAGE 

How to use the module in your own scripts.

1. Make sure it is on your PYTHONPATH.
    - accomplish this in one of 2 ways:
    a) put it in /usr/lib(64)/python$VERSION/site-packages
    b) put it in another directory (e.g. /usr/local/lib/python/site-packages) and add that to your search path in your scripts, like this:
    #!/usr/bin/env/python
    import sys
    sys.path.append('/usr/local/lib/python/site-packages')

2. Before you can do anything, you'll need to import the module
    import rhnapi

3. to ease typing, the module supports the use of a config file in .ini format, defaulting to '~/.rhninfo'
this should look like this (you can include sections for different satellites if you wish. Each [] section should contain only one hostname.
No regex or protocol bits or any other funny business.
# sample ~/.rhninfo
    [DEFAULTS]
    login=None
    password=None

    [your.satellite.hostname]
    login=xxxxx
    password=xxxx

if you miss the password=xxxxx bit (or leave it set to None), you'll be prompted for it.

4. create an instance of the rhnSession class:
    RHN = rhnapi.rhnSession(server, config='~/.rhninfo')

5. Import the other bits you want
    e.g.
    from rhnapi import system

6. Each of the different methods requires an rhnSession to be given to it (made it easier to split everything up)

    so:
        system.listSystems(RHN)

    should do what it says on the tin


happy RHNing