inessential by Brent Simmons

Open Source XML-RPC for Cocoa

I posted a new open source XML-RPC implementation for Cocoa. It’s BSD licensed, which means you can use it in commercial apps and apps that aren’t themselves open source.

This code is, at this writing, just a little ahead of the code that’s in the current NetNewsWire beta. NetNewsWire’s weblog editor uses XML-RPC to communicate with Radio UserLand, Movable Type, Conversant, Blogger, and so on.

The code is in beta: it needs more testing and more documentation.

People will ask: why not use WebServicesCore? Here’s a quote from the Cocoa XML-RPC page:

At this writing (7 March 2003) the implementation of XML-RPC in Apple’s WebServicesCore has a crashing bug. Whenever a method response contains an empty element, there’s a crash.

We fully expect this (and other smaller bugs) to get fixed—but we couldn’t wait. (NetNewsWire’s weblog editor uses XML-RPC heavily; it’s how external editors work with weblogs.)

Using this XML-RPC code has other benefits: it’s Open Source, so you can see the code. As a set of Cocoa classes it’s easier to use than a C API, and you can create sub-classes.