Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Naming of method parameters in the XML-RPC spec...

Author:George T. Talbot
Posted:2/18/1999; 11:59:18 AM
Topic:Naming of method parameters in the XML-RPC spec...
Msg #:3003
Prev/Next:3002 / 3004

I've read the spec for XML-RPC and have a question about method parameters:

I've been experimenting with using XML in a custom distributed-object system and am interested in conforming to existing standards, such as the Fronteir XML-RPC spec. Currently, I name parameters in a method call like this: (a contrived example in the style of XML-RPC...)

example.OpenFile readme.txt w

or, assuming that both sides agreed upon data types through other means...

example.OpenFile readme.txt w

Is there a reason not to do this, and to use the parameter types as tag names rather than using the parameter names as tag names? One might also do this:

example.OpenFile name readme.txt mode m

The reasoning behind naming the parameters explicitly is removing the sensitivity upon order in a method call. Should it make a difference what order the parameters are in? Currently, as far as I can tell, it does, as parameters are not named. Why is this done differently from the notation in the XML-RPC standard? For example, why not:

example.OpenFile name readme.txt mode w

This might also allow extension of existing messages by adding parameters such that old clients that don't understand the new parameters would ignore them.

Sorry if these questions are a bit off-the-wall...I'm coming to this from probably a slightly different perspective and without the context that everyone else has.

-- George T. Talbot <george@moberg.com>

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