Apex Code Development You need to sign in to do that
Don't have an account?
Barry L Looking for XML-RPC examples
Hi,
As a company, we tend to prefer working in XML technologies directly. Being new to SFDC development, I assumed that I'd go the XML-RPC, however, from reading the boards and looking at the toolkits, it seems as if SOAP is the preferred method. This kind of suprized me, since we generally think of SOAP as a stopgap measure until XML-RPC is fully adopted. Maybe we're out of synch with everyone else.
Some questions:
1) Are there XML-RPC samples and code that I've missed?
2) What's "native" API and archtecture? I'm assuming that XML-RPC and SOAP are both layers over a native Java implementation. If so, is there a performance difference between the two layers? Normally, I'd expect XML-RPC to be much faster.
3) What's the recommended XML-RPC client for .NET developers? One would think that HttpWebRequest/HttpWebResponse would work just fine.
Thanks,
Barry
Hi Barry,
Thanks for your comments. The emphasis on SOAP is based on several factors, not the least of which is the lack of standard, widely available XML-RPC clients. SOAP also provides broader access to the API to various other clients such as Office applications and that ilk.
SOAP as a stopgap measure is probably not the right way to think of the technology. SOAP in it's current form may be immature in some ways, but I believe (and with that let the debate begin!) that SOAP implementations will be the dominant XML format in the future. So enough religion, on to your questions.
1) There are numerous message samples in the API document that is available from our website. We do not have canned code samples because of the lack of XML-RPC clients available. There are plenty of developers using XML-RPC for sforce in just about any language you can think of, so I would expect our community members to be able to help out here.
2) The "native" API is a Java servlet. I don't know what the architecture is and don't think it's all that relevent to the end user since the only way to interact is via XML-RPC or SOAP. There is parity in performance on the server side, so there is no advantage to using XML-RPC instead of SOAP or visa versa.
3) You are correct about the implementation of the XML-RPC client on .Net. As a matter of fact, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe the SOAP client uses the libraries that you mentioned as well. I built a .NET XML-RPC client about 10 months ago using some public domain libraries provided by Charles Cook of Cook Computing - http://www.cookcomputing.com. Check out his xml-rpt.net at http://www.xml-rpc.net/. You can download a C# XML-RPC client at http://www.xml-rpc.net/release/xml-rpc.net.0.8.1.zip.
sforce and salesforce.com are in no way affiliated or have any kind of relationship with Cook Computing.
sforce and salesforce.com do not endorse, support or make any claims as to the suitability of third party software, and links to third party software are provided as a convience.
I hope you find this information useful.
Cheers
Ah, yes, the religious wars. I also believe that SOAP will be around for a long time, because it's a very easy transport mechanism to layer on top of traditional coding techniques. We tend to use XML in our products directly, so the SOAP layer just adds overhead. As for performance, I just wanted to know for sure.
Thanks for the help. I'll take a look at the new docs. I was still looking at 1.8.
Barry