Metadata-Version: 2.1
Name: vboxwebber
Version: 0.0.1
Summary: A standalone client for VirtualBox webservice API
Home-page: https://github.com/larshson/vboxwebber
Author: larshson
Author-email: larshson@gmail.com
License: UNKNOWN
Platform: UNKNOWN
Classifier: Development Status :: 3 - Alpha
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python
Classifier: License :: OSI Approved :: GNU General Public License v2 (GPLv2)
Classifier: Operating System :: OS Independent
Requires-Python: >=2.7
Description-Content-Type: text/markdown
Requires-Dist: zeep

# vboxwebber
The purpose of this project is to provide a <b>Python3</b> client for the VirtualBox <b>webservices</b> API. It is standalone in the way that it does not depend on the python libraries distributed with VirtualBox SDK (which to date only supports Python2 via the ancient ZSI library).

The vboxwebber.py is generated from an XSL stylesheet and contains vbox API wrapper functions that uses zeep as SOAP-library under the hood.

The XSL stylesheet is based on the websrv-python.xsl file from the VirtualBox source package, but somewhat improved and modified to use zeep instead of ZSI. Documentation for classes and methods are also generated, hopefully removing the need of sitting with the SDK reference alongside when coding.


## Usage
Initialize a web session manager by specifying the URL for the VirtualBox web service, and optionally the URL for the wsdl file. For older web services, I didn't manage to get the wsdl file remotely, so it can be a local file, e.g. "file:///tmp/vboxweb.wsdl".

The service and interface methods should be the same as when using the official SDK, so porting old code should be easy. Classes are generated for enums etc., but it is recommended to combine with the VirtualBox_constants.py from the SDK (which is also generated from the constants-python.xsl stylesheet - encorporating this into the same file is a TODO).

```python
from vboxwebber import *

# Initiate the client
mgr = IWebsessionManager2("http://localhost:18083")

# Logon, get the IVirtualBox object
vbox = mgr.logon("username", "password")

# Print API version
print(vbox.getAPIVersion())

# Find machine
machine = vbox.findMachine("kali2019.4")

# Get the session object
session =  mgr.getSessionObject(vbox)

# Lock the machine to the session
machine.lockMachine(session, SessionType.WriteLock)

# Get the display
display = session.console.display

# Get screen resolution info
width, height, _bpp, _xo, _yo, _status = display.getScreenResolution(0)

# Take a screenshot
screenshot = display.takeScreenShotToArray(0, width, height, "PNG")

# Write data to file
with open("/tmp/screenshot.png", "wb") as f:
    f.write(screenshot)

# Log off, cleaning up resources (implicit, at least for newer vbox versions)
mgr.logoff(vbox)
```

## Generating 
The VirtualBox API doesn't change much, but should the need arise, it is easy to generate a new wrapper based on a specific VirtualBox release. Just download the VirtualBox source code, put the xsl stylesheet in src/VBox/Main/webservice and run:
  *  xsltproc websrv-zeep.xsl ../idl/VirtualBox.xidl > vboxwebber.py

## TODO's
  * Distributable software packages?
  * Conditionalize the generation of documentation?
  * Modify the VirtualBox glue code to include this as a platform?
  * Generate even better documentation with docstring syntax etc.
  * Sort the licensing bit

## Help
Improvements are welcome.


