I've been implementing XML-RPC handlers under Quixote, and have found
myself writing stereotyped code.  The function I keep repeating looks
like this:

def rpc (request):
    # Get contents of POST body
    data = ...

    # Parse arguments
    params, method = xmlrpclib.loads(data)

    try:
        result = rpc_process(method, params)
    except:
        # report exception back to client
        ...
    else:
        return xmlrpclib.dumps(result)

rpc_process() then looks like this:

def rpc_process (method, params):
    if method == 'get_authtoken':
        user, password, device = params
        user_db = base.get_user_database()
    elif ...

All this scaffolding is needed so the actual methods which do the work
can be simple:

def get_ticket (user, service):
    return "ticket"

So what would a natural Quixote-like interface for this would be?
Here's a suggestion:

from quixote import xmlrpc

_q_exports = ['RPC2']  # or whatever...

def get_ticket (arg1, arg2):
    ...

def check (rule):
    ...

xmlrpc_funcs = ['get_ticket', 'check', ...]
RPC2 = xmlrpc.XMLRPCExporter(xmlrpc_funcs)

The exporter would need to do some fairly evil work, peeking in the
calling frame's locals to get the functions corresponding to each
name.  Alternatively you could pass a list of (string, function) tuples
containing the method name and the function to call.

Thoughts?

--amk                                                             (www.amk.ca)
Logopolis is a cold place, a cold high place overlooking the universe.
    -- The Master, in "Logopolis"