How to pass byte data in the xml payload

Question

I am trying to pass a xml payload as an input to a function and in the payload objectZippedData field doesn't take string as an input, instead it needs the input to be in byte format.

def getSoapResponse(Envelope, url, action):
    try:
        envelope = Envelope
        # Create and register opener. Requires proxy when behind a firewall
        opener = urllib.request.build_opener(urllib.request.HTTPHandler(), urllib.request.HTTPSHandler(),
                                             urllib.request.ProxyHandler())
        urllib.request.install_opener(opener)
        # Create request for the service call
        request = urllib.request.Request(url)

        # Configure the request content type to be xml
        request.add_header("Content-Type", 'application/soap+xml;charset=utf-8')

        # Set the SOAP action to be invoked; while the call works without this, the value is expected to be set based on standards
        request.add_header("SOAPAction", action)

        # Write the xml payload to the request
        request.data = envelope.encode()
        
        handle = urllib.request.urlopen(request, cafile=certifi.where())
            
        # Get the response and process it
        xmlString = (handle.read(2000).decode('utf-8'))
        if action != "uploadObjectInSession":
            # Convert the response into XML tree structure
            sessionxml = fromstring(xmlString)
            # Get the session value from the XML tree
            ReturnVal = sessionxml[0][0][0].text if action == 'login' else 'Success'
            return (ReturnVal)
        else:
            return "Success"
    except Exception as err:
        print("getSoapResponse - Error occurred; Message ", str(err))
        print("===============================================================")
        return "Error"

def uploadSession(catFile, Target):
    try:
       with open(catFile, 'rb') as f:
           bytes_encoded = base64.b64encode(f.read())
           string_encoded = bytes_encoded.decode()
           f.close()
    except IOError:
       return "Error"

new_Envelope = """<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:v2="http://xmlns.oracle.com/oxp/service/v2">
        <soapenv:Header/>
        <soapenv:Body>
            <v2:uploadObjectInSession>
                <v2:reportObjectAbsolutePathURL>""" + Target + """</v2:reportObjectAbsolutePathURL>
                <v2:objectType>xdoz</v2:objectType>
                <v2:objectZippedData>""" + string_encoded + """</v2:objectZippedData>
                <v2:bipSessionToken>""" + target_sessionid + """</v2:bipSessionToken>
            </v2:uploadObjectInSession>
        </soapenv:Body>
        </soapenv:Envelope> """

Final = getSoapResponse(Envelope=new_Envelope, url, action='uploadObjectInSession')
    if Final=="Error":
       print("FAILURE")
       return "Error"
    else:
       print(Final)
       return "Success"

Once the above function is called, and if I pass the string in objectZippedData, it fails to succeed whereas if I pass byte data in objectZippedData, I get the below error

new_Envelope = """<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:v2="http://xmlns.oracle.com/oxp/service/v2">
TypeError: can only concatenate str (not "bytes") to str

Answer 1

Use .encode() to convert a string to bytes

>>> mystr="test"
>>> type(mystr)
<class 'str'>
>>> type(mystr.encode())
<class 'bytes'>

Your error suggests that when creating your newEnvelope by concatenating (using +) to accumulate your inputs together, one of them is actually of type bytes, instead of a string.

Find which one and use .decode() to turn it into a string.