[Zope] xmlrpc calls require string results?

[Toby Dickenson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Pierson [mailto:dan@remote.control.com]
> 
> > From: Toby Dickenson 
> > 
> > >    # if a method called by it doesn't return a string.
> > >     # This is bogus, but:
> > >     return 'Done'
> > > 
> > > BTW: all of this appears to me to be true whether or not 
> > Squishdot is
> > > involved -- I have tested with target methods that are not 
> > part of it.
> > > 
> > > What am I doing wrong here?
> > 
> > Obviously xmlrpclib needs to be able to marshal the return 
> > value back to the
> > caller. The xmlrpc spec has no equivalent of the 'None' that 
> > results from a
> > returnless function in python, hence the error.
> > 
> > The return values does not have to be a string; just 
> > something that xmlrpc
> > understands.
> 
> I can understand this in principal, but methods that return 
> simple integers
> fail.  I'd expect xmlrpc to be able to handle them.  
> 
> Also some of the articles in the Byte series talk about 
> passing structures
> back and forth so I assumed that the xmlrpc support was smart 
> enought to do
> things like pack a list of ids (i.e. list of strings) as an 
> XML structure on
> its own.

Well, it works ok for me.

>>> xmlrpclib.Server('http://server/').objectIds()
['Control_Panel', 'standard_html_header', 'standard_html_footer',
'standard_erro
r_message', 'acl_users' ......