I'd like to write a python library to wrap a REST-style API offered by a particular Web service. Does anyone know of any good learning resources for such work, preferably aimed at intermediate Python programmers?
I'd like a good article on the subject, but I'd settle for nice, clear code examples.
CLARIFICATION: What I'm looking to do is write a Python client to interact with a Web service -- something to construct HTTP requests and parse XML/JSON responses, all wrapped up in Python objects.
This article might help http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-wrap/ - its about creating interfaces to library C code, but the principles can be applied.
Python extensions in C++ might also help, this might help get you started: http://www.geocities.com/foetsch/python/extending_python.htm
I can't point you to any article on how to do it, but I think there are a few libraries that can be good models on how to design your own.
PyAws for example. I didn't see the source code so I can't tell you how good it is as code example, but the features and the usage examples in their website should be a useful design model
Universal Feed Parser is not a wrapper for a webservice (it's an RSS parser library), but it's a great example of a design that prioritizes usage flexibility and hiding implementation details. I think you can get very good usage ideas for your wrapper there.
My favorite combination is httplib2 (or pycurl for performance) and simplejson. As REST is more "a way of design" then a real "protocol" there is not really a reusable thing (that I know of). On Ruby you have something like ActiveResource. And to be honest, even that would just expose some tables as a webservice, whereas the power of xml/json is that they are more like "views" that can contain multiple objects optimized for your application. I hope this makes sense :-)
This tutorial page could be a good starting place (but it doesn't contain everything you need).
You should take a look at PyFacebook. This is a python wrapper for the Facebook API, and it's one of the most nicely done API's I have ever used.
It would help to know about the service API you want to interface with. You say "REST-style" but that can mean many things these days, since almost no one actually means REST when they say it. The way you'd consume a real REST API is very different from the much more common RPC APIs.
You could checkout pythenic jobs, a nice, simple, but well-formed "Python wrapper around the Authentic Jobs ... API" as a good example. That's what I'm doing now :)