Re: Webmin RPC

[Jamie C. <jca...@we...>]

Wil Cooley wrote:
> 
> Also Sprach Jamie Cameron <jca...@we...> on Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 05:39:14PM PST
> > The need for extra modules is part of the reason for not using XML-RPC,
> > but another is that (as far as I know) it doesn't support the passing
> > of complex structures as parameters or return values. Because many of
> > the remote webmin functions pass or return arrays and hashes, the lack
> > of structures really rules out XML-RPC, which only supports simple
> > types like strings and numbers.
> >
> > Correct me if I am wrong about this though, because it probably wouldn't
> > be too hard to add some kind of gateway between XML-RPC and Webmin RPC
> > if they both have the same capabilities ..
> 
> I've been thinking more about this, and the complex
> datastructures should pose no problem.  I did a little
> looking around my Perl installation (including CPAN modules
> RH shipped) and found XML::Dumper, which will take a Perl
> structure and output XML.  Here's an example from the man
> page:
> 
> #!/usr/bin/perl
> 
> # Convert Perl code to XML
> use XML::Dumper;
> my $dump = new XML::Dumper;
> $data = [
>           {
>             first => 'Jonathan',
>             last => 'Eisenzopf',
>             email => 'ei...@po...'
>           },
>           {
>             first => 'Larry',
>             last => 'Wall',
>             email => ' la...@wa...'
>           }
>          ];
> $xml = $dump->pl2xml($data);
> 
> print $xml, "\n" ;
> 
> # EOF
> 
> Which produces:
> 
> <perldata>
>  <array>
>   <item key="0">
>    <hash>
>     <item key="last">Eisenzopf</item>
>     <item key="first">Jonathan</item>
>     <item key="email">ei...@po...</item>
>    </hash>
>   </item>
>   <item key="1">
>    <hash>
>     <item key="last">Wall</item>
>     <item key="first">Larry</item>
>     <item key="email"> la...@wa...</item>
>    </hash>
>   </item>
>  </array>
> </perldata>
> 
> Violá!

That's a good solution .. as long as callers are willing to
convert all structures into this format, then I can't see any
problems with it.  What someone needs to do is write a gateway
of some kind between webmin-RPC and XML-RPC .. or even add
XML-RPC support directly to webmin. I wouldn't want to get rid
of the existing RPC right away, in order to preserve backwards
compatibility, but there is no reason why they both cannot
exist side-by-side.

What kind of network transport does XML-RPC use? Does it make
an HTTP connection for each function call, or use some other
special protocol?

 - Jamie