Web Services¶

The web-service module offer a common interface for all web-services :

XML-RPC
JSON-RPC

Business objects can also be accessed via the distributed object mechanism. They can all be modified via the client interface with contextual views.

Flectra is accessible through XML-RPC/JSON-RPC interfaces, for which libraries exist in many languages.

XML-RPC Library¶

The following example is a Python 3 program that interacts with an Flectra server with the library xmlrpc.client:

import xmlrpc.client

root = 'http://%s:%d/xmlrpc/' % (HOST, PORT)

uid = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy(root + 'common').login(DB, USER, PASS)
print("Logged in as %s (uid: %d)" % (USER, uid))

# Create a new note
sock = xmlrpc.client.ServerProxy(root + 'object')
args = {
    'color' : 8,
    'memo' : 'This is a note',
    'create_uid': uid,
}
note_id = sock.execute(DB, uid, PASS, 'note.note', 'create', args)

Exercise

Add a new service to the client

Write a Python program able to send XML-RPC requests to a PC running Flectra (yours, or your instructor’s). This program should display all the sessions, and their corresponding number of seats. It should also create a new session for one of the courses.

JSON-RPC Library¶

The following example is a Python 3 program that interacts with an Flectra server with the standard Python libraries urllib.request and json. This example assumes the Productivity app (note) is installed:

import json
import random
import urllib.request

HOST = 'localhost'
PORT = 8069
DB = 'openacademy'
USER = 'admin'
PASS = 'admin'

def json_rpc(url, method, params):
    data = {
        "jsonrpc": "2.0",
        "method": method,
        "params": params,
        "id": random.randint(0, 1000000000),
    }
    req = urllib.request.Request(url=url, data=json.dumps(data).encode(), headers={
        "Content-Type":"application/json",
    })
    reply = json.loads(urllib.request.urlopen(req).read().decode('UTF-8'))
    if reply.get("error"):
        raise Exception(reply["error"])
    return reply["result"]

def call(url, service, method, *args):
    return json_rpc(url, "call", {"service": service, "method": method, "args": args})

# log in the given database
url = "http://%s:%s/jsonrpc" % (HOST, PORT)
uid = call(url, "common", "login", DB, USER, PASS)

# create a new note
args = {
    'color': 8,
    'memo': 'This is another note',
    'create_uid': uid,
}
note_id = call(url, "object", "execute", DB, uid, PASS, 'note.note', 'create', args)

Examples can be easily adapted from XML-RPC to JSON-RPC.

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