Passing ruby literals over TPC as an alternative to Xml-Rpc

Passing ruby literals seems an easy way to let programs communicate with each other.. And it eliminates the verbosity of XML. I'll give an example for those not familiar with literals or xml-rpc: Instead of sending: <array> <data> <value><i4>1404</i4></value> <value><string>Something here</string></value> <value><i4>1</i4></value> </data> </array> you would be sending: [ 1404, "Something here", 1 ] Do you think it could be a valid alternative to Xml-Rpc? I would love to hear your insights :-) Kind regards, Francis

Dolazy wrote: > Passing ruby literals seems an easy way to let programs communicate > with each other.. And it eliminates the verbosity of XML. > > I'll give an example for those not familiar with literals or xml-rpc: > Instead of sending: > <array> > <data> > <value><i4>1404</i4></value> > <value><string>Something here</string></value> > <value><i4>1</i4></value> > </data> > </array> > > you would be sending: > [ 1404, "Something here", 1 ] > > Do you think it could be a valid alternative to Xml-Rpc? > > I would love to hear your insights :-) > > Kind regards, > Francis > > > > But if you are using an XML-RPC library you will never see the XML. How is this a problem? What you are suggesting would work but then you could also use bencoding (as used in torrent files), which has a smaller overhead than XML but is quite flexible. Sure passing stuff over sockets would work :) but why do you feel the need to replace XML-RPC? There is a little more to XML-RPC than the XML encoding, ok not much more but it is more than just stuffing things into XML. The advantages of using XML-RPC is that it will allow other programming languages to communicate with you without having to write libraries for your new protocol for half a dozen languages. Now SOAP, that's an abomination!

Peter Hickman wrote: > Dolazy wrote: >> Passing ruby literals seems an easy way to let programs communicate >> with each other.. And it eliminates the verbosity of XML. >> >> I'll give an example for those not familiar with literals or xml-rpc: >> Instead of sending: >> <array> >> <data> >> <value><i4>1404</i4></value> >> <value><string>Something here</string></value> >> <value><i4>1</i4></value> >> </data> >> </array> >> >> you would be sending: >> [ 1404, "Something here", 1 ] >> >> Do you think it could be a valid alternative to Xml-Rpc? >> >> I would love to hear your insights :-) >> >> Kind regards, >> Francis >> >> >> >> > But if you are using an XML-RPC library you will never see the XML. How > is this a problem? > > What you are suggesting would work but then you could also use bencoding > (as used in torrent files), which has a smaller overhead than XML but is > quite flexible. > > Sure passing stuff over sockets would work :) but why do you feel the > need to replace XML-RPC? There is a little more to XML-RPC than the XML > encoding, ok not much more but it is more than just stuffing things into > XML. The advantages of using XML-RPC is that it will allow other > programming languages to communicate with you without having to write > libraries for your new protocol for half a dozen languages. > > Now SOAP, that's an abomination! > I'm sure YAML-RPC's been suggested before, if XML verbosity makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, and if cross-language compatibility isn't an issue, DRb's the way to go, surely... -- Alex