[Zope] Re: I'm clumsy with XML-RPC.

[Cameron Laird]

> From kyler at lairds.com Thu Dec 25 09:14:58 2003
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> It's been a long time since I poked at Zope with XML-RPC.  I was hoping
> to start using it for a very public set of tools, but the only things I
> can do right now are very clumsy.

> I have a Python Script, "test", in Zope with parameters "first=None,
> second=None".  The Script just "prints" and returns the values.

> Trying what would seem to be an elegant way of calling it,
> 	Zope_server.test(first='foo', second='bar')
> yields an error.
> 	TypeError: __call__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'second'

> O.k., so I fall back to an old script I wrote that uses Meerkat (which
> still works!) and see that I can pass it a dictionary.  Try again.
> 	Zope_server.test({'first': 'foo', 'second': 'bar'})
> 	"first={'second': 'bar', 'first': 'foo'}\nsecond=None\n"
> That still doesn't give me access to "second".

> I've been looking in the obvious places for examples with multiple
> parameters but I've found none.  Any pointers?  (I think I originally
> worked from an article by Jon Udell at Byte but it seems to have
> disappeared.)  

> The obvious alternative is to ditch XML-RPC and just use plain HTTP. 
> Zope knows how to handle HTTP well enough and I'm quite comfortable with
> it, so it's almost my preference.  I just thought that XML-RPC seemed
> like a cleaner way to handle this (and I'd recommended it for some other
> uses so I thought I should get some real experience with it).
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Short answer:  don't hesitate to use straight HTTP
for communications.  RPC, and XML-RPC in particular,
is *supposed* to be about clean and easy programma-
bility, but it just doesn't live up to the promise.
At this point, I see little motivation in being a
pioneer at doing what's necessary to make it useful
in, for example, Zope.