XML-RPC XML-RPC is the second request format supported by Flickr. XML-RPC uses HTTP as the transport and XML for encoding. In XML-RPC, the method parameters are wrapped in a XML document and POST-ed to the XML-RPC endpoint, in this case http://api.flickr.com/services/xmlrpc/. A XML-RPC request will have this format: <methodCall> <methodName>flickr.test.echo</methodName> <params> <param> <value> <struct> <member> <name>api_key</name> <value><string>..your API key..</string></value> </member> </struct> </value> </param> </params> </methodCall> If the method takes more than one parameter, you will have to repeat the <member> structure for each parameter; you can find detailed instructions regarding the packaging of complex datatypes at www.xmlrpc.com. Here is how to implement this call in Actionscript: var request:XML; var response:XML; request=new XML(); response = new XML(); response.onLoad=function(success:Boolean){ trace(success); trace(this.toString()); } request.xmlDecl = '<?xml version="1.0"?>'; request.parseXML("<methodCall><methodName>flickr.test.echo</methodName><params> <param><value><struct><member><name>api_key</name><value>..your API key..</value></member></struct></value></param></params></methodCall>"); request.sendAndLoad("http://api.flickr.com/services/xmlrpc/", response); Since this is a HTTP POST operation, I have to use the sendAndLoad method of the XML object. Developer Matt Shaw is behind an open source project that provides a XML-RPC library for Actionscript; an introduction can be found at http://xmlrpcflash.mattism.com/, or you can download the library (more details can be found here). Using this library, the call to the echo function shown above would look like this: import com.mattism.http.xmlrpc.Connection; import com.mattism.http.xmlrpc.ConnectionImpl; onLoadListing = function( response:Array ){ trace("Found the following objects:"); var i:Number; for (i=0; i<response.length; i++){ trace(i+". "+url+response[i]); } }; var url:String = "http://api.flickr.com/services/xmlrpc/"; var c:Connection = new ConnectionImpl(); c.setUrl(url); c.onLoad = onLoadListing; c.addParam( { api_key:'...your API key...' }, "struct"); c.call("flickr.test.echo");

from SimpleXMLRPCServer import SimpleXMLRPCServer,SimpleXMLRPCRequestHandler class ExtendedXMLRPCRequestHandler(SimpleXMLRPCRequestHandler): def do_GET(self): #only allow a request for the crossdomain file #this can be changed to support GETs of any file if needed if self.path != '/crossdomain.xml': self.send_response(403) self.log_request(403) return #open the crossdomain file and read its contents f = file('crossdomain.xml', 'r') msg = f.read() f.close() #write the data to the socket along with valid HTTP headers res = 'HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\nDate: %s\r\n\r\n%s' % \ (self.date_time_string(),msg) self.wfile.write(res) self.log_request(200) class EchoClass: def echo(self, data): return data #create an instance of the class s = EchoClass() #create the server on localhost server = SimpleXMLRPCServer(('', 8000), ExtendedXMLRPCRequestHandler) #register the instance as a web service server.register_instance(s) #start accepting requests server.serve_forever()