18.24 xmlrpclib -- XML-RPC client access

# 18.24 `xmlrpclib` -- XML-RPC client access

New in version 2.2.

XML-RPC is a Remote Procedure Call method that uses XML passed via HTTP as a transport. With it, a client can call methods with parameters on a remote server (the server is named by a URI) and get back structured data. This module supports writing XML-RPC client code; it handles all the details of translating between conformable Python objects and XML on the wire.

class `ServerProxy`( | uri[, transport[, encoding[, verbose[, allow_none[, use_datetime]]]]])

  A `ServerProxy` instance is an object that manages communication with a remote XML-RPC server. The required first argument is a URI (Uniform Resource Indicator), and will normally be the URL of the server. The optional second argument is a transport factory instance; by default it is an internal `SafeTransport` instance for https: URLs and an internal HTTP `Transport` instance otherwise. The optional third argument is an encoding, by default UTF-8. The optional fourth argument is a debugging flag. If allow_none is true, the Python constant `None` will be translated into XML; the default behaviour is for `None` to raise a `TypeError`. This is a commonly-used extension to the XML-RPC specification, but isn't supported by all clients and servers; see http://ontosys.com/xml-rpc/extensions.php for a description. The use_datetime flag can be used to cause date/time values to be presented as ``datetime`.datetime` objects; this is false by default. ``datetime`.datetime`, ``datetime`.date` and ``datetime`.time` objects may be passed to calls. ``datetime`.date` objects are converted with a time of ``00:00:00''. ``datetime`.time` objects are converted using today's date.

  Both the HTTP and HTTPS transports support the URL syntax extension for HTTP Basic Authentication: `http://user:pass@host:port/path`. The `user:pass` portion will be base64-encoded as an HTTP `Authorization' header, and sent to the remote server as part of the connection process when invoking an XML-RPC method. You only need to use this if the remote server requires a Basic Authentication user and password.

  The returned instance is a proxy object with methods that can be used to invoke corresponding RPC calls on the remote server. If the remote server supports the introspection API, the proxy can also be used to query the remote server for the methods it supports (service discovery) and fetch other server-associated metadata.

  `ServerProxy` instance methods take Python basic types and objects as arguments and return Python basic types and classes. Types that are conformable (e.g. that can be marshalled through XML), include the following (and except where noted, they are unmarshalled as the same Python type):

  Name | Meaning
  --- | ---
  `boolean` | The `True` and `False` constants
  `integers` | Pass in directly
  `floating-point numbers` | Pass in directly
  `strings` | Pass in directly
  `arrays` | Any Python sequence type containing conformable elements. Arrays are returned as lists
  `structures` | A Python dictionary. Keys must be strings, values may be any conformable type.
  `dates` | in seconds since the epoch (pass in an instance of the `DateTime` class) or a ``datetime`.datetime`, ``datetime`.date` or ``datetime`.time` instance
  `binary data` | pass in an instance of the `Binary` wrapper class

  This is the full set of data types supported by XML-RPC. Method calls may also raise a special `Fault` instance, used to signal XML-RPC server errors, or `ProtocolError` used to signal an error in the HTTP/HTTPS transport layer. Both `Fault` and `ProtocolError` derive from a base class called `Error`. Note that even though starting with Python 2.2 you can subclass builtin types, the xmlrpclib module currently does not marshal instances of such subclasses.

  When passing strings, characters special to XML such as "`<`", "`>`", and "`&`" will be automatically escaped. However, it's the caller's responsibility to ensure that the string is free of characters that aren't allowed in XML, such as the control characters with ASCII values between 0 and 31 (except, of course, tab, newline and carriage return); failing to do this will result in an XML-RPC request that isn't well-formed XML. If you have to pass arbitrary strings via XML-RPC, use the `Binary` wrapper class described below.

  `Server` is retained as an alias for `ServerProxy` for backwards compatibility. New code should use `ServerProxy`.

  Changed in version 2.5: The use_datetime flag was added.

See Also:

XML-RPC HOWTO
  A good description of XML operation and client software in several languages. Contains pretty much everything an XML-RPC client developer needs to know.

XML-RPC Hacks page
  Extensions for various open-source libraries to support introspection and multicall.