[svedlin]

The Google APIs Client Generator is an awesome tool that automates this process. It takes a service description and generates a complete client library:

https://code.google.com/p/google-apis-client-generator/

The service is defined in a platform-neutral discovery document, which can be used by any provider:

https://developers.google.com/discovery/v1/reference/apis

There are generators for Python, Java, .NET, Objective-C, PHP, Go, GWT, Node.js, Ruby, and others.

[quotemstr]

> The Google APIs Client Generator is an awesome tool that automates this process. It takes a service description and generates a complete client library

So we've gone full circle and arrived back at SOAP. Why didn't we just keep using SOAP in the first place?

[jordanthoms]

Well, at least the underlying API is much simpler - you can do things manually if necessary. Trying to talk to WCF SOAP services from Ruby has been really painful - none of the SOAP libraries actually work with the Microsoft stuff, and it's so overcomplicated that making requests manually is a pain.

[LunaSea]

Because SOAP is an unnecessary overhead and complication. It also kills performance.

[bluefinity]

Because everybody's SOAP implementation is subtly different, leading to bugs/pain/things not working.