272061 - Make XML-RPC (nsXmlRpcClient) available to scripts in web pages as XmlRpcClient

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: XML, enhancement)

Description

[seth]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041103 Firefox/1.0RC2
Build Identifier: 

SOAP works in web pages, via new SOAPCall(). XML-RPC, which provides the same
basic functionality as SOAP, should work in web pages also. Right now, XML-RPC
only works in the chrome.

It should also be made available to web pages, as SOAP is, rather than only
running from the chrome. There are 3rd party XML-RPC javascript libraries
written with XMLHTTPRequest that support everything you can do with
nsXmlRpcClient, but which actually work in the browser. (For example:
<http://www.scottandrew.com/xml-rpc/>)

XML-RPC is widely deployed and supported in many different web services. The
best-known examples are the external weblog editing API's like blogger,
metaweblog, movable type (mt), manila, and conversant. It's probably not as
widely deployed as SOAP, but it's far easier to work with.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Try to use 'new XmlRpcClient()' in a javascript in a web page.
Actual Results:  
Error: XmlRpcClient is not defined.

Expected Results:  
Created the new XmlRpcClient object.

Comment 1

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

The problem is that xml-rpc is unowned I believe :)  It is also implemented in
JS, so I am not sure how easy that would be.  We need to be carefull with cross
domain policies as well.

Comment 2

[seth]

(In reply to comment #1)
> The problem is that xml-rpc is unowned I believe :)  It is also implemented in
> JS, so I am not sure how easy that would be.  We need to be carefull with cross
> domain policies as well.

It's difficult to expose JavaScript-based components to web pages? I did not
know that. (Not arguing with you, I'm just surprised.) Or, do you mean that
because it's written in JavaScript, it would be hard to expose it "safely." ?

Maybe it's time for someone to rewrite xml-rpc in cpp.

Comment 3

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/xpfe/components/sidebar/src/nsSidebar.js
seems to be able to do this, so maybe not that hard.

Comment 4

[Peter Van der Beken [:peterv]]

The XML-RPC component was removed (I think before Firefox 3).