Python xmlrpc lib Transport that used Requests

transport.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
A replacement transport for Python xmlrpc library.

Usage:

    >>> import xmlrpclib
    >>> from transport import RequestsTransport
    >>> s = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http://yoursite.com/xmlrpc', transport=RequestsTransport())
    >>> s.demo.sayHello()
    Hello!
"""
try:
    import xmlrpc.client as xmlrpc
except ImportError:
    import xmlrpclib as xmlrpc

import requests

class RequestsTransport(xmlrpc.Transport):
    """
    Drop in Transport for xmlrpclib that uses Requests instead of httplib
    """
    # change our user agent to reflect Requests
    user_agent = "Python XMLRPC with Requests (python-requests.org)"

    # override this if you'd like to https
    use_https = False

    def request(self, host, handler, request_body, verbose):
        """
        Make an xmlrpc request.
        """
        headers = {'User-Agent': self.user_agent}
        url = self._build_url(host, handler)
        try:
            resp = requests.post(url, data=request_body, headers=headers)
        except ValueError:
            raise
        except Exception:
            raise # something went wrong
        else:
            try:
                resp.raise_for_status()
            except requests.RequestException as e:
                raise xmlrpc.ProtocolError(url, resp.status_code, 
                                                        str(e), resp.headers)
            else:
                return self.parse_response(resp)

    def parse_response(self, resp):
        """
        Parse the xmlrpc response.
        """
        p, u = self.getparser()
        p.feed(resp.text)
        p.close()
        return u.close()

    def _build_url(self, host, handler):
        """
        Build a url for our request based on the host, handler and use_http
        property
        """
        scheme = 'https' if self.use_https else 'http'
        return '%s://%s/%s' % (scheme, host, handler)

To use with Plone, set the content type header to "text/xml". For Basic Auth support, get_host_info (http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/2.7/Lib/xmlrpclib.py#l1334) is your friend for getting the user & passwd to pass to requests.post.

@petri @chrisguitarguy the content type header is also needed with PyPI. See here for the fix.

I don't get the point of the outer try block. Isn't

resp = requests.post(url, data=request_body, headers=headers)
try:
    resp.raise_for_status()
except requests.RequestException as e:
    raise xmlrpc.ProtocolError(url, resp.status_code, 
        str(e), resp.headers)
else:
    return self.parse_response(resp)

equivalent?

The parse_response method is problematic, as it passes a unicode to a method that expects binary. We can simply pass the raw response object. My version (which also passes through TLS client certs) becomes:

class RequestsTransport(xmlrpclib.SafeTransport):
    """
    Drop in Transport for xmlrpclib that uses Requests instead of httplib


    """
    # change our user agent to reflect Requests
    user_agent = "Python XMLRPC with Requests (python-requests.org)"

    def __init__(self, use_https=True, cert=None, verify=None, *args, **kwargs):
        self.cert = cert
        self.verify = verify
        self.use_https = use_https
        xmlrpclib.SafeTransport.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

    def request(self, host, handler, request_body, verbose):
        """
        Make an xmlrpc request.
        """
        headers = {'User-Agent': self.user_agent}
        url = self._build_url(host, handler)
        try:
            resp = requests.post(url, data=request_body, headers=headers,
                                 stream=True,
                                 cert=self.cert, verify=self.verify)
        except ValueError:
            raise
        except Exception:
            raise  # something went wrong
        else:
            try:
                resp.raise_for_status()
            except requests.RequestException as e:
                raise xmlrpclib.ProtocolError(url, resp.status_code,
                                              str(e), resp.headers)
            else:
                self.verbose = verbose
                return self.parse_response(resp.raw)

    def _build_url(self, host, handler):
        """
        Build a url for our request based on the host, handler and use_http
        property
        """
        scheme = 'https' if self.use_https else 'http'
        return '%s://%s/%s' % (scheme, host, handler)

Duly note the lack (!) of a parse_response method as we simply use the one from the parent class. See also http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/user/quickstart/#raw-response-content