XML-RPC over Zope 3, a quick tutorial

What 's XML-RPC ?

XML-RPC is a very simple Remote Procedure Control encoded in xml that can be used to interact with an application server from another program (another server, a rich client, or some Ajax'ed web Page)

More infos at wikipedia

XML-RPC in Zope 3

Zope 3 comes with a very handy approach to provide XML-RPC features. You just have to write a view class that provides methods that will be available as RPC methods.

If you are coming for Zope 2 world, please read up philliKon's slides at worldcookery (other Z3 goodies can be found there).

from zope.app.publisher.xmlrpc import XMLRPCView

class FolderListing(XMLRPCView):
    def contents(self):
        """ returns the folder content """
        return list(self.context.keys())

from zope.app.publisher.xmlrpc import XMLRPCView
from zope.app.xmlrpcintrospection.xmlrpcintrospection import xmlrpccallable

class FolderListing(XMLRPCView):

    @xmlrpccallable(str)
    def contents(self):
        """ returns the folder content """
        return list(self.context.keys())

<configure xmlns="http://namespaces.zope.org/zope"
        xmlns:xmlrpc="http://namespaces.zope.org/xmlrpc">
<xmlrpc:view
    for="zope.app.folder.folder.IFolder"
    methods="contents"
    class="xmlrpctest.xmlrpctest.FolderListing"
    permission="zope.ManageContent"/>
</configure>

<include package="xmlrpctest" />

Trying out the XML-RPC method

Let's try out our product, with a few lines of python, using xmlrpclib:

from XMLRPCAuth import BasicAuthTransport
from xmlrpclib import ServerProxy

transport = BasicAuthTransport('admin', 'admin')
proxy = ServerProxy('http://localhost:8080/ok', transport=transport)

print 'method list:'
for method in proxy.listMethods():
    signature = proxy.methodSignature(method)[0]
    returned_type = signature[0]
    arguments_type = ', '.join(signature[1:])
    print '  + %s(%s) -> %s: %s' % (method, arguments_type, returned_type,
                                proxy.methodHelp(method).strip())

This small program will display all XML-RPC methods available on the folder ok, with their signatures.

The XMLRPCAuth package is a simple module that provides a basic authorization transport, and can be taken here: XMLRPCAuth

tziade@Tarek:/home/tziade$ python z3test.py
method list:
+ contents() -> str: returns the content of the folder