Perl Development FAQ


Welcome to the Perl Development FAQ for iControl. This FAQ will focus on issues surrounding development of iControl applications using the SOAPLite perl module.

How do I remove warnings from iControlTypeCast.pm

There are a couple of problems with this example. Some warnings are a result of using potentially undefined variables in the deserializer if statement. Update:
if (defined ($urnMap->{$type}))

to
if ( defined ($urnMap) && defined ($type) && defined ($urnMap->{$type}))

This gets rid of most warnings, but you will still get something similar to: Subroutine SOAPDeserializertypecast redefined–> This warning can be removed by wrapping the subroutine in a BEGIN block with “no warnings” declared.
BEGIN{
    no warnings;
  sub SOAP__Deserializer__typecast-->
  {
...
   }
}

I’m passing correct data, but I am still seeing SOAP errors. How do I fix this?

You may be passing the right data, but the format that you are sending may be incorrect. Try the following.
$param = SOAP__Data->name(variable_name)->value(variable_value);

It sure would be nice to see the raw xml output of my transactions. How can I get more information about what’s going on behind the scenes?

There are a couple of things to do. You can set the outputxml flag for a particular SOAPLite object by doing this:
$SoapObject->outputxml(1);

You can also try this as part of your use statement:
use SOAP__Lite ( outputxml => 1, );

Or even better (but much more verbose):
use SOAP__Lite +trace => 'all', readable => 1, outputxml => 1;

I only have operator access to a specific partition on the F5. Many of the sample scripts don’t seem to work.

The default partition that is used is “Common”. If you need to access a different partition, you have to set the active partition:
my $Partition = SOAP__Lite
    -> uri('urn<!--:iControl:Management/Partition')-->
    -> proxy("https://yourBigIP/"."/iControl/iControlPortal.cgi");
$Partition->transport->http_request->header
  (
    'Authorization' =>
        'Basic ' . MIME__Base64__encode($user.":".$password, '')-->
  );

my $results = $Partition->set_active_partition(
  SOAP__Data->name('active_partition')->value(thenameofyourpartition)
);

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