Commentary:

This is an XML-RPC client implementation in elisp, capable of both synchronous and asynchronous method calls (using the url package’s async retrieval functionality).

XML-RPC is remote procedure calls over HTTP using XML to describe the function call and return values.

xml-rpc.el represents XML-RPC datatypes as lisp values, automatically converting to and from the XML datastructures as needed, both for method parameters and return values, making using XML-RPC methods fairly transparent to the lisp code.

Installation:

If you use ELPA, and have configured the NonGNU ELPA or MELPA repository, then M-x package-install RET xml-rpc RET interface. This is preferable as you will have access to updates automatically.

If you would like to use ELPA, but this is your first time to use it, or NonGNU ELPA/MELPA, then try evaluating the following code in emacs:

(progn
  (require 'package)
  (add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/") t)
  (unless (package-installed-p 'xml-rpc)
    (with-temp-buffer
      (url-insert-file-contents "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xml-rpc-el/xml-rpc-el/master/xml-rpc.el")
      (package-install-from-buffer))))

Otherwise, just make sure this file in your load-path (usually ~/.emacs.d is included) and put

(require 'xml-rpc)

in your ~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.d/init.el file.

Requirements

xml-rpc.el uses the url package for http handling and xml.el for XML parsing or, if you have Emacs 27+ with libxml included, libxml. The url package that is part of Emacs works fine.

Bug reports

Please use M-x xml-rpc-submit-bug-report to report bugs directly to the maintainer, or use github’s issue system.

Representing data types

XML-RPC datatypes are represented as follows

type	data
int	42
float/double	42.0
string	“foo”
base64	(list :base64
	(base64-encode-string “hello” t))
	’(:base64 “aGVsbG8=”)
array	‘(1 2 3 4) ‘(1 2 3 (4.1 4.2)) [ ]
	’(:array ((“not” “a”) (“struct” “!”)))
struct	’((“name” . “daniel”)
	(“height” . 6.1))
dateTime	’(:datetime (1234 124))

Examples

Here follows some examples demonstrating the use of xml-rpc.el

Normal synchronous operation

(xml-rpc-method-call "http://localhost:80/RPC" 'foo-method foo bar zoo)

Asynchronous example (cb-foo will be called when the methods returns)

(defun cb-foo (foo)
  (print (format "%s" foo)))

(xml-rpc-method-call-async 'cb-foo "http://localhost:80/RPC"
                           'foo-method foo bar zoo)

Some real world working examples for fun and play

These were last tested working on 2020-09-06.

Fetch the first state name from UserLand’s server

(xml-rpc-method-call "http://betty.userland.com/rpc2"
                     'examples.getStateName '(1))

Results in:

Alabama

Get a list of supported methods from a blog

(mapconcat (lambda (s) (when s s))
  (xml-rpc-method-call "https://hexmode.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php"
                       'mt.supportedMethods)
  ", ")