How to use WLST as a Jython 2.7 module

WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) in WebLogic Server 12.1.3 uses Jython version 2.2.1 (based on Python 2.2.1). This can be an important limitation when using WLST. Many modules are not available for 2.2.1 or are difficult to install. See here for an example. WLST however can be used as a module in Jython 2.7. This allows you to use all kinds of nice Jython 2.7 goodness while still having all the great WLST functionality available.

To just name some nice Jython 2.7 features:

• pip and easy_install can be used to easily add new modules
• useful new API’s are available such as xml.etree.ElementTree to allow XML processing, the multiprocessing module to use multiple threads and the argparse module to make parsing of script arguments easy.

In this article I’ll describe how you can use WLST as a Jython 2.7 module in order to allow you to combine the best of both worlds in your scripts.