[Zope-dev] xmlrpc: Syntax error at line 34: illegal characterin content

[richard@bizarsoftware.com.au]

Shane Hathaway wrote:
> I feel like the absence of base-64 encoding is an oversight in the
> protocol, along with the absence of a "null" type (which would correspond
> to "None".)  That's why I think it's not a kludge to extend XML-RPC.

The omission of the explicit null is one of the oldest gripes with XML-RPC
(and last time I read up on it, Dave Winer was firmly against its
inclusion). It's usually the first thing I add to the "spec" when I'm
working with it.


> But why is the 30% bloat an issue?  The important parts of the base64
> module are in C and the encoding and decoding is fast.

Encode/decode speed is fine (using binascii, not base64 ;)

Mostly it's network bandwidth issue. We're implementing an "offline
management" feature specifically for users who are on the end of a slow
link to their server. We're looking at transferring potentially big images.
It is therefore a high priority to make the xml-rpc transactions as fast as
possible. I'm starting to look around for other mechanisms. I looked into
faking file upload form submissions, but Python's support for
multipart/form-data is pretty rough - and from my reading, the RFC is
rather hazy on the support of unencoded data.

Zope to Zope FTP is my next avenue to investigate ;)


> > > In fact it's time to convert xmlrpclib to use the Expat module (via SAX)
> > > in Python 2.1.  It should speed it up dramatically.
> >
> > I wish we had the luxury of moving to python 2.1 :(
> 
> Actually the sax / expat module is also available for Python 1.5.2, if
> that helps.

Yeah, as long as there's pre-compiled binaries for win32, I'm happy. I'm
currently in VC++ hell trying to get freetype2 and the python ft2_interface
compiled for windows. Argh.

Oh yeah, another thing I noticed is that the Zope profiling seems to break
if an xmlrpc call is invoked. Just hangs when it hits the call. Any clues?


   Richard

-- 
Richard Jones
richard@bizarsoftware.com.au
Senior Software Developer, Bizar Software (www.bizarsoftware.com.au)