This library provides a simple Python client to interact with SoftLayer's XML-RPC API.
A command-line interface is also included and can be used to manage various SoftLayer products and services.
Documentation for the Python client is available at Read the Docs .
Additional API documentation can be found on the SoftLayer Development Network:
Install via pip:
$ pip install softlayer
Or you can install from source. Download source and run:
$ python setup.py install
Another (safer) method of installation is to use the published snap. Snaps are available for any Linux OS running snapd, the service that runs and manage snaps. Snaps are "auto-updating" packages and will not disrupt the current versions of libraries and software packages on your Linux-based system. To learn more, please visit: https://snapcraft.io/
To install the slcli snap:
$ sudo snap install slcli
(or to get the latest release)
$ sudo snap install slcli --edge
The most up-to-date version of this library can be found on the SoftLayer GitHub public repositories at http://github.com/softlayer. For questions regarding the use of this library please post to Stack Overflow at https://stackoverflow.com/ and your posts with “SoftLayer” so our team can easily find your post. To report a bug with this library please create an Issue on github.
This library relies on the requests library to make HTTP requests. On Python versions below Python 2.7.9, requests has started emitting a security warning (InsecurePlatformWarning) due to insecurities with creating SSL connections. To resolve this, upgrade to Python 2.7.9+ or follow the instructions here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/29099439.
You can automatically set some parameters via environment variables with by using the SLCLI prefix. For example
$ export SLCLI_VERBOSE=3
$ export SLCLI_FORMAT=json
$ slcli vs list
is equivalent to
$ slcli -vvv --format=json vs list
Bugs and feature requests about this library should have a GitHub issue opened about them.
Issues with the Softlayer API itself should be addressed by opening a ticket.
A curated list of examples on how to use this library can be found at SLDN
To get started working with this project please read the CONTRIBUTING document.
You can quickly test local changes by running the './slcli' file, which will load the local softlayer-python code instead of the system's softlayer-python codebase.
To get the exact API call that this library makes, you can do the following.
For the CLI, just use the -vvv option. If you are using the REST endpoint, this will print out a curl command that you can use, if using XML, this will print the minimal python code to make the request without the softlayer library.
$ slcli -vvv vs list
If you are using the library directly in python, you can do something like this.
import SoftLayer
import logging
class invoices():
def __init__(self):
self.client = SoftLayer.Client()
debugger = SoftLayer.DebugTransport(self.client.transport)
self.client.transport = debugger
def main(self):
mask = "mask[id]"
account = self.client.call('Account', 'getObject', mask=mask);
print("AccountID: %s" % account['id'])
def debug(self):
for call in self.client.transport.get_last_calls():
print(self.client.transport.print_reproduceable(call))
if __name__ == "__main__":
main = example()
main.main()
main.debug()
- Python 3.8, 3.9, or 3.10.
- A valid SoftLayer API username and key.
- A connection to SoftLayer's private network is required to use our private network API endpoints.
As of version 6.0.0 SoftLayer-Python will no longer support python3.6, which is End of Life as of 2022. If you cannot install python 3.8+ for some reason, you will need to use a version of softlayer-python <= 6.0.0
As of version 5.8.0 SoftLayer-Python will no longer support python2.7, which is End Of Life as of 2020 . If you cannot install python 3.6+ for some reason, you will need to use a version of softlayer-python <= 5.7.2
- prettytable >= 2.5.0
- click >= 8.0.4
- requests >= 2.20.0
- prompt_toolkit >= 2
- pygments >= 2.0.0
- urllib3 >= 1.24
- rich == 12.3.0
NOTE If ptable (not prettytable) is installed, this will cause issues rendering tables.
This software is Copyright (c) 2016-2021 SoftLayer Technologies, Inc.
See the bundled LICENSE file for more information.