Introspection support for XML-RPC aware application

"XML-RPC is a Remote Procedure Calling protocol that works over the Internet."

Sometimes your XML-RPC application gets so large that it becomes hard to remember what remote method can be called. Therefore a set of functions have been standardized to get some information about your application.

The xmlrpclib module suggests the following RPC method calls:

• system.listMethods()
• system.methodSignature(name)
• system.methodHelp(name)

They use introspection to retrieve information about your application.

This recipe tries to provide a simple implementation of those RPC method calls. It onlu supports listMethods() and methodHelp() for now.

import inspect


class XmlRpcSystemInformation:
    """Defines some introspection function for an XML-RPC server application handled by CherryPy"""
    # See http://docs.python.org/lib/serverproxy-objects.html
    
    def __init__(self):
        self.rpcmethods = {}
    
    def register_class(self, classInstance, instancePath=None):
        """Registers the given class exposed methods
        
        Keyword arguments:
        classInstance -- class instance which will be scanned for exposed methods
        instancePath -- sets the path to the instance (eg: obj1.obj2 for obj1.obj2.methodName)
        """
        for method in inspect.getmembers(classInstance, inspect.ismethod):
            if getattr(method[1], 'exposed', False) == True:
                if instancePath:
                    self.rpcmethods[instancePath + '.' + method[0]] = method[1]
                else:
                    self.rpcmethods[method[0]] = method[1]
    
    def listMethods(self):
        """Return a list of all methods callable on the RPC server."""
        return self.rpcmethods.keys()
    listMethods.exposed = True
    
    def methodHelp(self, methodName):
        """Return the doc string of the given method (or a default message)."""
        if methodName not in self.rpcmethods:
            raise LookupError, "This method is not registered on this server"
        
        method = self.rpcmethods[methodName]
        doc = method.__doc__
        if not doc:
            raise ValueError, 'No available help for ' + methodName
        return doc
    methodHelp.exposed = True


if __name__ == '__main__':
    import cherrypy
    
    class A:
        def hello(self):
            return "hello there from A"
        hello.exposed = True

    class B:
        def hello(self):
            return "hello there from B"
        hello.exposed = True
        
    class Root:
        def echo(self, value=''):
            """Return the supplied value (default '')"""
            return value
        echo.exposed = True
    
    # Let's build the tree of exposed objects
    root = Root()
    root.a = A()
    root.a.b = B()
    
    # Attach each exposed object (part of the XML-RPC application)
    # to the object dealing with introspection
    system = XmlRpcSystemInformation()
    system.register_class(root)
    system.register_class(root.a, 'a')
    system.register_class(root.a.b, 'a.b')
    
    root.system = system
    cherrypy.quickstart(root, config={'/': {'tools.xmlrpc.on': True}})
    
    # Your client could then try:
##     import xmlrpclib
##     server = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http://localhost:8080/')
##     server.system.listMethods() # will return ['a.hello', 'a.b.hello', 'echo']
##     server.system.methodHelp('echo') # will return the help for echo
##     server.system.methodHelp('a.b.hello') # will raise xmlrpclib.Fault: 'No available help for a.b.hello'
##     server.system.methodHelp('ech') # will raise xmlrpclib.Fault because cho doesn't exist
##     server.system.methodHelp() # will raise a xmlrpclib.ProtocolError because methodHelp takes at least one arg

Older versions

2.2

Add the following to the XmlRpcSystemInformation? class:

class XmlRpcSystemInformation:

    def _cpOnError(self):
        # We make sure that the errors we explicitely raise
        # are not handled by the default CP error handler
        import sys
        error_type = sys.exc_info()[0]
        if error_type in (LookupError, ValueError):
            return
        # default CP error handler...
        cherrypy.HTTPError(500).set_response()   

...and replace:

    root = Root()
    root.a = A()
    root.a.b = B()
    
    # Attach each exposed object (part of the XML-RPC application)
    # to the object dealing with introspection
    system = XmlRpcSystemInformation()
    system.register_class(root)
    system.register_class(root.a, 'a')
    system.register_class(root.a.b, 'a.b')
    
    root.system = system
    cherrypy.quickstart(root, config={'/': {'tools.xmlrpc.on': True}})

...with:

    cherrypy.root = Root()
    cherrypy.root.a = A()
    cherrypy.root.a.b = B()

    # Attach each exposed object (part of the XML-RPC application)
    # to the object dealing with introspection
    system = XmlRpcSystemInformation()
    system.register_class(cherrypy.root)
    system.register_class(cherrypy.root.a, 'a')
    system.register_class(cherrypy.root.a.b, 'a.b')
    
    cherrypy.root.system = system
    cherrypy.config.update({'global': {'xmlRpcFilter.on':True}})
    cherrypy.server.start()