Python Cookbook

Serving XML-RPC Requests

Credit: Brian Quinlan

Problem

You need to implement an XML-RPC server.

Solution

The xmlrpclib package also makes writing XML-RPC servers pretty easy. Here’s how you can write an XML-RPC server:

# server coder sxr_server.py
# needs Python 2.2 or the XML-RPC package from PythonWare

import SimpleXMLRPCServer

class StringFunctions:
    def _ _init_ _(self):
        # Make all of the Python string functions available through
        # python_string.func_name
        import string
        self.python_string = string

    def _privateFunction(self):
        # This function cannot be called directly through XML-RPC because
        # it starts with an underscore character '_', i.e., it's "private"
        pass

    def chop_in_half(self, astr):
        return astr[:len(astr)/2]

    def repeat(self, astr, times):
        return astr * times

if _ _name_ _=='_ _main_ _':
    server = SimpleXMLRPCServer.SimpleXMLRPCServer(("localhost", 8000))
    server.register_instance(StringFunctions(  ))
    server.register_function(lambda astr: '_' + astr, '_string')
    server.serve_forever(  )

And here is a client that accesses the server you just wrote:

# server coder sxr_client.py
# needs Python 2.2 or the XML-RPC package from PythonWare

import xmlrpclib

server = xmlrpclib.Server('http://localhost:8000')
print server.chop_in_half('I am a confidant guy')
print server.repeat('Repetition is the key to learning!\n', 5)
print server._string('<= underscore')
print server.python_string.join(['I', 'like it!'], " don't ")
print server._privateFunction(  )    # will throw an exception

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