XmlrpcHandlers

XML-RPC Handlers

Spacewalk exports a significant chunk of operations through its XML-RPC API. This page is intended to get you up and running with sample client scripts, and implement a sample XML-RPC call in one of the handlers. To find the list of supported API calls goto ApiDocs.

Using the API

Suppose one wants to obtain a list of users in his/her organization, the org admin would typically generate a client script like this in python.

#!python
#!/usr/bin/env python
import xmlrpclib

SATELLITE_HOST = "<your satellite address>"
SATELLITE_URL = "http://%s/rpc/api" % SATELLITE_HOST
login = "admin"
password = "password"

#connect to the server
client = xmlrpclib.Server(SATELLITE_URL, verbose=0)
# get the session key
key = client.auth.login(login, password)
# get the list of users
print client.user.list_users(key)

Parts of the server side making up the call

Lets trace through the example call client.user.list_users(key). There are two parts to this call, .user is the XML-RPC name space used to group logical methods together. The other part is list_users(key) which is the method called in the name space. Alternatively, methods can be specified in camelCase such as listUsers(key). The frontend API knows how to parse both types of calls.

In case you are user and suspect there is a bug in some call you would,

• ensure you are calling the call with correct parameters (correct count and type (integer/string/list...) of them
• investigate /var/log/tomcat6/catalina.out log file for tracebacks (easy way is to tail -f /var/log/tomcat6/catalina.out and recreate the failure to see what appears there)

NOTE: we need to expand the section below

In the case of a bug in this call you would,

• look at /eng/java/code/src/com/redhat/rhn/frontend/xmlrpc/handler-manifest.xml to figure out the class handling the "user" name space <template name="user" classname="com.redhat.rhn.frontend.xmlrpc.user.UserHandler" />
• look listUsers(String sessionKey) method in /eng/java/code/src/com/redhat/rhn/frontend/xmlrpc/user/UserHandler.java and trace the bug from there