Re: [Webware-discuss] XML-RPC in browsers

[Michael <mp...@uw...>]

Thanks for the reply.
I was actually planning on using XML-RPC for transfer of 'naked' data 
only, not HTML.
One thing that intrigues me is that Python and JavaScript are actually 
quite close in their syntax of data types: [] for lists and arrays and 
{} for dicts and 'objects', respectively. Replace 'None' by 'null' , 
lowercase True and False and you are there. Parsing the received data 
then is just a matter of calling 'eval'. 30 lines of code on either 
side, and you are able to exchange arbitrarily nested data.



Ian Bicking wrote:

> Michael wrote:
>
>> For a more complex web app, I'm considering options for remote 
>> scripting without page reload.
>> I know there is XMLRPCServlet. Has anyone been using that with a 
>> JavaScript client?  If so, what was your experience?
>
>
> I haven't used the Javascript XMLHttpRequest myself, though I keep 
> planning to try it.  I don't get the impression it is usually used as 
> XML-RPC, though I'm sure it could be.  Often the result returned by 
> the server is itself HTML (e.g., an HTML fragment that should be 
> inserted into the page somewhere), which isn't valid XML-RPC.  Unless 
> you entity-encoded it or something.
>
> Anyway, XMLRPCServlet is a fairly thin wrapper -- if you read the 
> source it should be easy to understand.  You could use some of the 
> same mechanism in your servlet without involving xmlrpclib.
>


-- 
Michael Palmer
Department of Chemistry
University of Waterloo
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