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POC : new XMLRPC endpoint from Odoo

November 3, 2014 by
POC : new XMLRPC endpoint from Odoo

An email loop from Odoo - Official! The current XMLRPC layers (/xmlrpc/ and /xmlrpc/2/) use the old calling conventions (CC). They can't be converted to the new CC as there is not enough information at their point to do so (knowledge of whether/where ids and contexts are). This means new-CC methods must currently be decorated with @model or @multi to be exposed over RPC, or calling them raises a TypeError (number of parameters does not match). The old CC can't be deprecated/removed until RPC has been converted to the new CC. At the same time, while working on the webservice doc, I found out Odoo's xmlrpc layer is pretty idiosyncratic and doesn't really take advantage of xmlrpc and the facilities provided by xmlrpc libraries. The endpoint switch caused by the new CC was the occasion to explore that part as well.

Calling Conventions

To match the new calling conventions, the new endpoint has to split up the ids (if any) and context (if any) from the positional and keyword arguments. This was done by adding a mandatory subject positional argument which can be:

  • falsy, in which case the method is called on an empty recordset with a context-less environment
  • a list, which is assumed to be a list of record ids used for the subject recordset
  • a mapping which may provide the keys records and context. The records key is browsed (or ignored) and the context key is used as base for the environment this scheme seems to provide the best flexibility and terseness, as well as extensibility by using more keys from the subject mapping.

Like execute_kw, calls then take a args list and a kwargs dict, both are optional rather than just the kwargs: a method can be called with only args, only kwargs, or neither.

Authentication

All xmlrpc libraries surveyed provide built-in support for HTTP Basic Authentication. The new endpoint thus replaces the custom authentication by HTTP Basic

  • no less (or more) secure than the existing scheme: relies on underlying transport being HTTPS for security
  • avoids an extraneous auth step to resolve a uid
  • no need to keep uid/password around, they're embedded in the xmlrpc proxy object
  • easy to integrate (Basic sends "cleartext" username and password)

Endpoint

Uses /RPC2:

  • does not conflict with existing endpoints
  • used for spec examples
  • a number of documents call it the conventional XML-RPC path
  • at least one stdlib defaults to /RPC2 when no path is provided

Leverage XML-RPC conventions

XML-RPC methodName is conventionally a dotted path (e.g. system.listMethods), which some libraries ( ripcord, xmlrpclib) can map onto the language's own dereferencing/attribute access. This maps nicely to Odoo's models: the last segment of the methodName is the method itself, the rest is the model name. This means read for account.account can be called as:

a_db.account.account.read(…)

Originally the database name was part of the path, but because authentication depends on the db (or lack thereof), it was moved to the endpoint (URL query parameter)

  • Global methods (e.g. create/drop database) are done on a DB-less endpoint
  • DB-specific methods (none currently but maybe printing reports? Sending workflow signals?) are function calls on DB'd endpoint (no dot in path)
  • rest is method call on a model

Code comparison

setup

common = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('https://{}/xmlrpc/2/common'.format(domain))
uid = common.authenticate(db, username, password, {})
models = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('https://{}/xmlrpc/2/object'.format(domain))

becomes

db = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('https://{}:{}@{}/RPC2?db={}'.format(username, password, domain, db))
partners = db.res.partner

simple method call

models.execute_kw(db, uid, password, 'res.partner', 'check_access_rights', ['read'], {'raise_exception': False})

becomes

partners.check_access_rights((), ['read'], {'raise_exception': False})

search

models.execute_kw(db, uid, password, 'res.partner', 'search', [[['is_company', '=', True], ['customer', '=', True]]])

becomes

partners.search((), [[['is_company', '=', True], ['customer', '=', True]]])

read

models.execute_kw(db, uid, password, 'res.partner', 'read', [ids])

becomes

partners.read(ids)

Custom XMLRPC serializer

New CC methods can return recordsets. Customizing xmlrpclib.Marshaller didn't work because it dispatches by strict type equality, so it wasn't possible to hook into it to serialise arbitrary recordsets (they get types created on-the-fly). A new marshaller was reimplemented on top of lxml instead. It provides the following features not provided by xmlrpclib.Marshaller:

  • serialises recordsets to lists of ids, uses BaseModel.ids (ignores NewId)
  • converts all mapping keys to strings (same as json.dumps) instead of raising an error
  • can serialise arbitrary mappings (e.g. Counter, defaultdict) not just dict
  • can serialise arbitrary iterables, not just list and tuple

Possible additions/reflexions

  • enable allow_none

/cc @odony @rco-odoo


You can merge this Pull Request by running

  git pull https://github.com/odoo-dev/odoo master-rpc2-xmo

Or view, comment on, or merge it at: https://github.com/odoo/odoo/pull/3989

Commit Summary

  • [ADD] new XMLRPC endpoint POC

File Changes

Patch Links: