Rewrite to use procedures and conditionally include xmlrpc.inc

drupal_xml_parser_create() does not require xmlrpc.inc...

If xmlrpc.php includes xmlrpc.inc, why do we have to include it in blogapi module's functions once more? Also, the inclusion of xmlrpc.inc in drupal.module can probably be avoided by including xmlrpc.inc in cron.php? Am I missing something?

Not all of the tasks in drupal.module are run with cron.php: for example, the distributed authentication comes in through drupal.module, which requires code from xmlrpc.inc to create the messages it sends out, as far as I can tell.

So, the drupal.module needs it for distributed authentication stuff, not just for pinging servers and so on.

I'm not 100% sure either, I was merely suggesting an alternative. I think the second patch might work tough, in which case it would be preferred for its simplicity. Not? I'll add "Testing Gerhard's blog API patch to my short term TODO list". Hopefully I get to it tonight after work. Thanks Gerhard.

Good patch, just a few minor comments.

- Use single quotes for constant strings.
- I noticed some indentations that were off the 2 column, looks like the are in the current code though.
- drupal_directory_ping() will only be invoked from xmlrpc.php so there shouldn't be a need to include the file there.

+1... I tested the patch with blogapi.module and w.bloggar and it works fine, as far as I can tell. I like any patch that includes less code on each page view.

Committed to HEAD. Thanks.

this patch didn't break blogapi.module, it's true. but it _did_ break drupal.module's distributed authentication feature. the problem is that xmlrpc.inc declares some classes, which will not work if the include statement appears inside a function. see the following for more details:

http://us4.php.net/manual/en/language.functions.php (specifically the comment by albaity at php4web dot com)

the attached patch restores the drupal.module functionality (as well as reintroduces the include in common.inc).

I'm afraid that's just the way it has to be, sorry killes ;)

(this patch also fixes a typo in drupal.module where the 'name' array key was not quoted - which may break things under higher error reporting levels).

Including the XML-RPC library at the top of those files/modules that need it sounds like a fair alternative.

But that doesn't really help unless you have no XML-RPC modules enabled at all...

What is more, I don't think it even fixes the bug.

The problem is that class declarations in PHP4 are not guaranteed to work correctly when made inside a function. This applies to declarations immediately inside a function definition, or in files included from inside a function definition, or even from files included from files included from function definitions. Note that since module files are included from module_load(), this means class definitions or includes of files that have them cannot safely be in modules.

Basically, conditional inclusion of classes is a no-no. To get around this we'd have to rewrite xmlrpc.inc using functions rather than object methods.

I reverted the patch.

ya, but you forgot to put the include_once back in common.inc . :)

This patch affects the inclusion of xmlrpc, which is the xmlrpc client, not xmlrpcs, which is the server and subject to the "all XML-RPC requests are POST requests" rule. Thus, it is ineffective.

However, we should consider eliminating the inclusion of xmlrpc.inc at all in common.inc.

This would speed up Drupal at the expense of modules that use XML-RPC calls having to include xmlrpc.inc themselves.

grepping for xmlrpc_ finds occurrences in drupal.module for cross-drupal-site authentication, foaf.module, livejournalmodule, and waypath.module.

And now that I've revisited JonBob's comments on this, I can see why it's currently the way it is and can't be conditionally included. Blech.

It seems that implementing xmlrpc as a (required) module would work around the include issue. I'm working on a xmlrpc.module from scratch, sort of as a Drupal learning exercise, which uses the XML-RPC extension functions instead of the xmlrpc.inc that we're using now and will reduce the code to a few lines instead of the big class that exists now.

Before I get too far into it though, I'm interested if anyone may have thoughts about why a module is not the way to go, or if there is some reason we shouldn't be using the XML-RPC functions.

The new library lets this happen. Also, this patch unifies the xmlrpc() and xmlrpc_multicall() calls. Most sites now load 12K less PHP code for almost all page requests.

Dries asked for more clear phpdoc. Robert Douglass and I have enhanced it.

Steven found that the faster ./ is missing from xmlrpc.php

Dries commited this but something went foobar in the latest two patches and now my phpdoc is broken :( only changes are in the comment.

Committed to HEAD.