Installing and Using XMLRPCProxy

To install:

• Extract the XMLRPCProxyBase.tgz in the root of your Zope Install. This will create a folder in lib/python/Products/
• Restart Zope
• put the XMLRPCProxy.zexp file in the import directory. Import it into Zope on the Products page in the Control Panel.
• Restart Zope again (not sure if you need to do this)

To use:

Using XMLRPCProxy is easy. Here is a simple example:

• Create an XMLRPCProxy. For this example, we'll call it RProxy. For the URL, type http://servername:port/path where servername is the name of the remote server, port is the remote port that Zope is running on, and path is the base path from which you will call remote methods.

• Note that you can can call methods in subdirectories simply by supplying the path to them as the method name (i.e. customers/interfaces/customerdata).

• On the remote server, create a Python Method called proxyTest In that method, make the only content be this (the definition line goes up in the id nd parameter list of course):
  

  def proxyTest(self): typelist = [] for item in self.objectValues(): typelist.append(item.meta_type) return typelist

• In the management interface for the RProxy instance, add proxyTest to the ValidMethodList list.

• You now have the ability to call this method on the remote server. To do so, create a DTML Method or Document.

• In it, put the following:
  

  <dtml-in "RProxy.callRemoteMethod('proxyTest')"> <dtml-var sequence-item><BR> </dtml-in>

• The output should be something like this:
  

  User Folder Control Panel DTML Method DTML Method DTML Method ZapCentral Portal External Method DTML Document Folder Folder XMLRPCProxy DTML Method Python Method XMLRPCProxy DTML Method XMLRPCProxy DTML Document Python Method

• Of course, you could modify this to only display certain types of objects. You can pass parameters to the callRemoteMethod method like this:
  

  <dtml-in "RProxy.callRemoteMethod('methodName', arg1, arg2, arg3)"> <dtml-var sequence-item><BR> </dtml-in>

• The arguments are automatically applied to the method when it is called.

Be aware that XML_RPC can only marshall certain kinds of python objects (integers, strings, lists, dictionaries, etc). See xmlrpclib.py for more details.