QXmlRPC Documentation

Introduction

The QXML-RPC library is a full Qt4 based implementation of XML-RPC ( http://www.xmlrpc.com/ ) protocol.

It provides an easy way to construct, send and receive XML-RPC messages on the client side, and process XML-RPC messages on the server side. It also supports XML-RPC introspection ( http://scripts.incutio.com/xmlrpc/introspection.html ) to provide information about methods of the xmlrpc server to clients and allows to perform method name and parameters type checks on the server before calling user implemented methods code.

To pass parameters of XML-RPC request, an QVariant based xmlrpc::Variant class is used. It provides deserialization and serialization from/to QDomElement, according to XML-RPC specification. It also restricts set of QVariant types to types accepted in XML-RPC protocol. This allows to perform compile time type checks and avoid of some bugs.

This project is inspired but not based on the QuteXR library.

Building a XML-RPC client

Just create a xmlrpc::Client instance, set the XML-RPC server with xmlrpc::Client::setHost() and if necessary with xmlrpc::Client::setProxy() and xmlrpc::Client::setUser().

 client = new xmlrpc::Client(this);
 connect( client, SIGNAL(done( int, QVariant )),
          this, SLOT(processReturnValue( int, QVariant )) );
 connect( client, SIGNAL(failed( int, int, QString )),
          this, SLOT(processFault( int, int, QString )) );
 
 client->setHost( "localhost", 7777 );
 
 int requestId = client->request( "sum", x, y )

After the request is finished, done() or failed() signal will be emited with the request id and return value or fault information.

For more information check xmlrpc::Client class documentation and client example stored in examples/client directory.

Building a standalone XML-RPC server

To build a standalone XML-RPC server, just create a xmlrpc::Server instance and call xmlrpc::Server::listen() to listen for requests on specified port.

You also can register provided methods with xmlrpc::Server::registerMethod() call. In this case the server will perform method name, parameters and return value type checks before emiting of incomingRequest() signal. It will also provide information about provided methods to clients.

Server instance will emit incomingRequest() signal, with the method name and parameters list. After the corresponding method is processed, Server::sendReturnValue() or Server::sendFault() must be called.

Building non standalone XML-RPC server

If the standalone server is not acceptable, for example in CGI like environment, the request can be parsed with xmlrpc::Request class, processed, and result ( the return value or fault information ) encoded with xmlrpc::Response class. The xmlrpc::ServerIntrospection class can optionaly be used to perform method names and types checks.

Examples

For examples of QXmlRPC based XML-RPC client and server check examples/client and examples/server directories.

Similar python based implementations are stored in test/pyclient and test/pyserver directories.