Default int value with xmlrpclib / xmlrpc.client

[julienc91]

BPO	27142
Nosy	@loewis, @rhettinger, @serhiy-storchaka, @julienc91

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2017-11-09.17:57:10.845>
created_at = <Date 2016-05-27.22:17:42.192>
labels = ['expert-XML', 'type-feature', 'library', '3.7']
title = 'Default int value with xmlrpclib / xmlrpc.client'
updated_at = <Date 2017-11-09.17:57:10.844>
user = 'https://github.com/julienc91'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2017-11-09.17:57:10.844>
actor = 'serhiy.storchaka'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2017-11-09.17:57:10.845>
closer = 'serhiy.storchaka'
components = ['Library (Lib)', 'XML']
creation = <Date 2016-05-27.22:17:42.192>
creator = 'julienc'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 27142
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['266517', '266533', '282046']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['loewis', 'rhettinger', 'serhiy.storchaka', 'julienc']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'rejected'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue27142'
versions = ['Python 3.7']

[julienc91]

I tried to execute the following code, but xmlrpclib is raising an exception:

    >>> import xmlrpclib
    >>> data = """<?xml version="1.0"?> 
    ... <methodCall>
    ...     <methodName>test_method</methodName>
    ...     <params>
    ...         <param>
    ...             <value>
    ...                 <int/>
    ...             </value>
    ...         </param>
    ...     </params>
    ... </methodCall>"""
    >>> xmlrpclib.loads(data)
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
      File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 1141, in loads
        p.feed(data)
      File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 558, in feed
        self._parser.Parse(data, 0)
      File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 829, in end
        return f(self, join(self._data, ""))
      File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 864, in end_int
        self.append(int(data))
    ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: ''

The behaviour is the same with <int></int>, and in python 3.4 with xmlrpc.client .
However, I tried to parse the same data with PHP, and it works without any trouble.

php > $data = '<?xml version="1.0"?><methodCall><methodName>test_method</methodName><params><param><value><int/></value></param></params></methodCall>';
php > print_r(xmlrpc_decode($data));
Array
(
    [0] => 0
)

The .NET documentation of XML-RPC also suggests that <int/> is interpreted as 0 (although I couldn't try it myself):

If an XML-RPC struct member is missing its corresponding .NET struct member will be set to null instead of the default value for the type if a non-nullable type had been used, for example null instead of zero for an integer.

Is it a feature in .NET and PHP implementations of XML-RPC, or a bug in the python implementation? I didn't find any documentation about the XML-RPC protocol itself on this topic.

[serhiy-storchaka]

XML-RPC Specification: http://xmlrpc.scripting.com/spec.html .

[serhiy-storchaka]

This format doesn't conform the XML-RPC specification. Adding the support of it is a new feature. The question is whether there is a need of this feature. Are there some common XML-RPC servers or clients that produce such format?