Question

I need to communicate with an XML-RPC server from a .NET 2.0 client. Can you recommend any libraries?

EDIT: Having tried XML-RPC.Net, I like the way it generates dynamic proxies, it is very neat. Unfortunately, as always, things are not so simple. I am accessing an XML-RPC service which uses the unorthodox technique of having object names in the names of the methods, like so:

object1.object2.someMethod(string1) 

This means I can’t use the attributes to set the names of my methods, as they are not known until run-time. If you start trying to get closer to the raw calls, XML-RPC.Net starts to get pretty messy.

So, anyone know of a simple and straightforward XML-RPC library that’ll just let me do (pseudocode):

x = new xmlrpc(host, port) x.makeCall('methodName', 'arg1'); 

I had a look at a thing by Michael somebody on Codeproject, but there are no unit tests and the code looks pretty dire.

Unless someone has a better idea looks like I am going to have to start an open source project myself!

Answer 1

If the method name is all that is changing (i.e., the method signature is static) XML-RPC.NET can handle this for you. This is addressed in the FAQ, noting ‘However, there are some XML-RPC APIs which require the method name to be generated dynamically at runtime…’ From the FAQ:

ISumAndDiff proxy = (ISumAndDiff)XmlRpcProxyGen.Create(typeof(ISumAndDiff)); proxy.XmlRpcMethod = 'Id1234_SumAndDifference' proxy.SumAndDifference(3, 4); 

This generates an XmlRpcProxy which implementes the specified interface. Setting the XmlRpcMethod attribute causes methodCalls to use the new method name.