[Zope-Coders] removing more Zope decoys

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Toby Dickenson writes:
 > The Zope version of xmlrpclib is not exactly the same as the standard python 
 > version. The differences relate to marshalling python types into xml: The 
 > standard python version cant marshal a python 'None'. Also there are some 
 > patches around that have special handling for some Zope classes: DateTime, 
 > File, Image. (this patch missed the deadline for 2.6).

There's actually a good reason <nil/> isn't supported by the standard
xmlrpclib module: it's not part of the XML-RPC specification, so it's
not really interoperable.  I'd love to know of a way to determine
whether the system on the other end of the connection supports it
(request header, etc.), but am not aware of a way to do this.  The
extension proposal for <nil/> doesn't provide for this, and the only
other implementation I know of that supports it is one of the Java
implementations (where <nil/> maps to null).

 > It would be nice if the standard xmlrpclib was flexible enough to support 
 > this. Until then I think we need the duplication (sadly)

There are definately some things that should be made more readily
supported; I'd like to take a look at the Zope version of xmlrpclib
and compare it to the Python version, and see what can be done.  I'm
not sure if or when time for this will appear, so please don't let me
discourage you from contributing.  Feel free to submit a patch to the
Python version via the Python project on SourceForge and assign it to
me.  ;-)


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fred at zope.com>
PythonLabs at Zope Corporation