SEM Development

I’ve recently started using Python and I’m really starting to love it. Now, with my reintroduction to SEM, I’ve had to figure out whether I should port my old Perl clients over to Python or just see if there’s already something written in Python. For AdWords, there’s a whole site of code samples in Python. One of these samples is actually a small Python client for AdWords. I loaded it up and started playing around with it. It’s a good starting point but, as usual, I want more.

First, and this is pretty much a port of some Perl code I had, I wanted to be able to access all the API methods from one object. I mean ALL of them. I don’t want to load each service separately. I want to be able to access the getAllAdWordsCampaigns method from the same object I access getAllAdGroups. I know, I know, “What about method name collisions?” or “That’s not a strict interpretation of OO design.” is what I’m hearing. And both are valid concerns, however here’s what I think:

Method name collisions: I haven’t seen any evidence that Google will start overlapping method names in different services. If they had that intention they would have used getAll as a method name in different services, not getAllAdWordsCampaigns, getAllAdGroups, getAllCriteria, and so on and so forth. If, for some reason, they decide to switch things up, I’ll have to rethink, but I’m willing to bet they won’t.

OO Design: This is easy. I don’t care. I don’t like SOAP. I see it as a play by Sun and MS to create such a complicated protocol that people are forced to use their language to implement it completely and correctly. I’ll stick with the view that the API is one big object when I’m replicating between my local db and the remote API. I’ll employ OO techniques when I’m using my local DB as a model layer.

So, I’ve created a small python AdWords API client in Google Code. I’ll be writing about it now and again. Here are some of the first changes I’ve made:

All API methods are loaded as actual methods in the API objects. By that I mean you can just do:

awclient = AdWordsClient(**loginParams)
campaigns = awclient.getAllAdWordsCampaigns(1)


Yup, you don’t need to get any services or call any wrapper “call” methods. Just call the method directly from the client object. I was able to do that by loading all the WSDLs and extracting the methods names. I use the setattr command to add the API call as an actual method. Also, the WSDLs are cached so you don’t have to keep grabbing them remotely.

This project is in its infancy and really just tailored to what I want right now. Of course, I’m always open to suggestions. Again, the code is at http://pyadwords-client.googlecode.com. It’s under the “Source” tab.