21.26.1. ServerProxy Objects

A ServerProxy instance has a method corresponding to each remote procedure call accepted by the XML-RPC server. Calling the method performs an RPC, dispatched by both name and argument signature (e.g. the same method name can be overloaded with multiple argument signatures). The RPC finishes by returning a value, which may be either returned data in a conformant type or a Fault or ProtocolError object indicating an error.

Servers that support the XML introspection API support some common methods grouped under the reserved system attribute:

ServerProxy.system.listMethods()

This method returns a list of strings, one for each (non-system) method supported by the XML-RPC server.

ServerProxy.system.methodSignature(name)

This method takes one parameter, the name of a method implemented by the XML-RPC server. It returns an array of possible signatures for this method. A signature is an array of types. The first of these types is the return type of the method, the rest are parameters.

Because multiple signatures (ie. overloading) is permitted, this method returns a list of signatures rather than a singleton.

Signatures themselves are restricted to the top level parameters expected by a method. For instance if a method expects one array of structs as a parameter, and it returns a string, its signature is simply “string, array”. If it expects three integers and returns a string, its signature is “string, int, int, int”.

If no signature is defined for the method, a non-array value is returned. In Python this means that the type of the returned value will be something other than list.

ServerProxy.system.methodHelp(name)

This method takes one parameter, the name of a method implemented by the XML-RPC server. It returns a documentation string describing the use of that method. If no such string is available, an empty string is returned. The documentation string may contain HTML markup.

A working example follows. The server code:

from xmlrpc.server import SimpleXMLRPCServer

def is_even(n):
    return n%2 == 0

server = SimpleXMLRPCServer(("localhost", 8000))
print("Listening on port 8000...")
server.register_function(is_even, "is_even")
server.serve_forever()

The client code for the preceding server:

import xmlrpc.client

proxy = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy("http://localhost:8000/")
print("3 is even: %s" % str(proxy.is_even(3)))
print("100 is even: %s" % str(proxy.is_even(100)))

21.26.2. DateTime Objects

This class may be initialized with seconds since the epoch, a time tuple, an ISO 8601 time/date string, or a datetime.datetime instance. It has the following methods, supported mainly for internal use by the marshalling/unmarshalling code:

DateTime.decode(string)

Accept a string as the instance’s new time value.

DateTime.encode(out)

Write the XML-RPC encoding of this DateTime item to the out stream object.

It also supports certain of Python’s built-in operators through rich comparison and __repr__() methods.

A working example follows. The server code:

import datetime
from xmlrpc.server import SimpleXMLRPCServer
import xmlrpc.client

def today():
    today = datetime.datetime.today()
    return xmlrpc.client.DateTime(today)

server = SimpleXMLRPCServer(("localhost", 8000))
print("Listening on port 8000...")
server.register_function(today, "today")
server.serve_forever()

The client code for the preceding server:

import xmlrpc.client
import datetime

proxy = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy("http://localhost:8000/")

today = proxy.today()
# convert the ISO8601 string to a datetime object
converted = datetime.datetime.strptime(today.value, "%Y%m%dT%H:%M:%S")
print("Today: %s" % converted.strftime("%d.%m.%Y, %H:%M"))

21.26.3. Binary Objects

This class may be initialized from bytes data (which may include NULs). The primary access to the content of a Binary object is provided by an attribute:

Binary.data

The binary data encapsulated by the Binary instance. The data is provided as a bytes object.

Binary objects have the following methods, supported mainly for internal use by the marshalling/unmarshalling code:

Binary.decode(bytes)

Accept a base64 bytes object and decode it as the instance’s new data.

Binary.encode(out)

Write the XML-RPC base 64 encoding of this binary item to the out stream object.

The encoded data will have newlines every 76 characters as per RFC 2045 section 6.8, which was the de facto standard base64 specification when the XML-RPC spec was written.

It also supports certain of Python’s built-in operators through __eq__() and __ne__() methods.

Example usage of the binary objects. We’re going to transfer an image over XMLRPC:

from xmlrpc.server import SimpleXMLRPCServer
import xmlrpc.client

def python_logo():
    with open("python_logo.jpg", "rb") as handle:
        return xmlrpc.client.Binary(handle.read())

server = SimpleXMLRPCServer(("localhost", 8000))
print("Listening on port 8000...")
server.register_function(python_logo, 'python_logo')

server.serve_forever()

The client gets the image and saves it to a file:

import xmlrpc.client

proxy = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy("http://localhost:8000/")
with open("fetched_python_logo.jpg", "wb") as handle:
    handle.write(proxy.python_logo().data)

21.26.4. Fault Objects

A Fault object encapsulates the content of an XML-RPC fault tag. Fault objects have the following attributes:

Fault.faultCode

A string indicating the fault type.

Fault.faultString

A string containing a diagnostic message associated with the fault.

In the following example we’re going to intentionally cause a Fault by returning a complex type object. The server code:

from xmlrpc.server import SimpleXMLRPCServer

# A marshalling error is going to occur because we're returning a
# complex number
def add(x,y):
    return x+y+0j

server = SimpleXMLRPCServer(("localhost", 8000))
print("Listening on port 8000...")
server.register_function(add, 'add')

server.serve_forever()

The client code for the preceding server:

import xmlrpc.client

proxy = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy("http://localhost:8000/")
try:
    proxy.add(2, 5)
except xmlrpc.client.Fault as err:
    print("A fault occurred")
    print("Fault code: %d" % err.faultCode)
    print("Fault string: %s" % err.faultString)

21.26.5. ProtocolError Objects

A ProtocolError object describes a protocol error in the underlying transport layer (such as a 404 ‘not found’ error if the server named by the URI does not exist). It has the following attributes:

ProtocolError.url

The URI or URL that triggered the error.

ProtocolError.errcode

The error code.

ProtocolError.errmsg

The error message or diagnostic string.

ProtocolError.headers

A dict containing the headers of the HTTP/HTTPS request that triggered the error.

In the following example we’re going to intentionally cause a ProtocolError by providing an invalid URI:

import xmlrpc.client

# create a ServerProxy with an URI that doesn't respond to XMLRPC requests
proxy = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy("http://google.com/")

try:
    proxy.some_method()
except xmlrpc.client.ProtocolError as err:
    print("A protocol error occurred")
    print("URL: %s" % err.url)
    print("HTTP/HTTPS headers: %s" % err.headers)
    print("Error code: %d" % err.errcode)
    print("Error message: %s" % err.errmsg)

21.26.6. MultiCall Objects

The MultiCall object provides a way to encapsulate multiple calls to a remote server into a single request [1].

class xmlrpc.client.MultiCall(server)

Create an object used to boxcar method calls. server is the eventual target of the call. Calls can be made to the result object, but they will immediately return None, and only store the call name and parameters in the MultiCall object. Calling the object itself causes all stored calls to be transmitted as a single system.multicall request. The result of this call is a generator; iterating over this generator yields the individual results.

A usage example of this class follows. The server code:

from xmlrpc.server import SimpleXMLRPCServer

def add(x, y):
    return x + y

def subtract(x, y):
    return x - y

def multiply(x, y):
    return x * y

def divide(x, y):
    return x // y

# A simple server with simple arithmetic functions
server = SimpleXMLRPCServer(("localhost", 8000))
print("Listening on port 8000...")
server.register_multicall_functions()
server.register_function(add, 'add')
server.register_function(subtract, 'subtract')
server.register_function(multiply, 'multiply')
server.register_function(divide, 'divide')
server.serve_forever()

The client code for the preceding server:

import xmlrpc.client

proxy = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy("http://localhost:8000/")
multicall = xmlrpc.client.MultiCall(proxy)
multicall.add(7, 3)
multicall.subtract(7, 3)
multicall.multiply(7, 3)
multicall.divide(7, 3)
result = multicall()

print("7+3=%d, 7-3=%d, 7*3=%d, 7//3=%d" % tuple(result))

21.26.7. Convenience Functions

xmlrpc.client.dumps(params, methodname=None, methodresponse=None, encoding=None, allow_none=False)

Convert params into an XML-RPC request. or into a response if methodresponse is true. params can be either a tuple of arguments or an instance of the Fault exception class. If methodresponse is true, only a single value can be returned, meaning that params must be of length 1. encoding, if supplied, is the encoding to use in the generated XML; the default is UTF-8. Python’s None value cannot be used in standard XML-RPC; to allow using it via an extension, provide a true value for allow_none.

xmlrpc.client.loads(data, use_datetime=False, use_builtin_types=False)

Convert an XML-RPC request or response into Python objects, a (params, methodname). params is a tuple of argument; methodname is a string, or None if no method name is present in the packet. If the XML-RPC packet represents a fault condition, this function will raise a Fault exception. The use_builtin_types flag can be used to cause date/time values to be presented as datetime.datetime objects and binary data to be presented as bytes objects; this flag is false by default.

The obsolete use_datetime flag is similar to use_builtin_types but it applies only to date/time values.

Changed in version 3.3: The use_builtin_types flag was added.

21.26.8. Example of Client Usage

# simple test program (from the XML-RPC specification)
from xmlrpc.client import ServerProxy, Error

# server = ServerProxy("http://localhost:8000") # local server
server = ServerProxy("http://betty.userland.com")

print(server)

try:
    print(server.examples.getStateName(41))
except Error as v:
    print("ERROR", v)

To access an XML-RPC server through a proxy, you need to define a custom transport. The following example shows how:

import xmlrpc.client, http.client

class ProxiedTransport(xmlrpc.client.Transport):
    def set_proxy(self, proxy):
        self.proxy = proxy
    def make_connection(self, host):
        self.realhost = host
        h = http.client.HTTP(self.proxy)
        return h
    def send_request(self, connection, handler, request_body):
        connection.putrequest("POST", 'http://%s%s' % (self.realhost, handler))
    def send_host(self, connection, host):
        connection.putheader('Host', self.realhost)

p = ProxiedTransport()
p.set_proxy('proxy-server:8080')
server = xmlrpc.client.Server('http://time.xmlrpc.com/RPC2', transport=p)
print(server.currentTime.getCurrentTime())

21.26.9. Example of Client and Server Usage

See SimpleXMLRPCServer Example.

Footnotes