Frontier::Responder - phpMan

NAME
    Frontier::Responder - Create XML-RPC listeners for normal CGI processes

SYNOPSIS
     use Frontier::Responder;
     my $res = Frontier::Responder->new( methods => {
                                                     add => sub{ $_[0] + $_[1] },
                                                     cat => sub{ $_[0] . $_[1] },
                                                    },
                                        );
     print $res->answer;

DESCRIPTION
    Use *Frontier::Responder* whenever you need to create an XML-RPC
    listener using a standard CGI interface. To be effective, a script using
    this class will often have to be put a directory from which a web server
    is authorized to execute CGI programs. An XML-RPC listener using this
    library will be implementing the API of a particular XML-RPC
    application. Each remote procedure listed in the API of the user defined
    application will correspond to a hash key that is defined in the "new"
    method of a *Frontier::Responder* object. This is exactly the way
    *Frontier::Daemon* works as well. In order to process the request and
    get the response, the "answer" method is needed. Its return value is XML
    ready for printing.

    For those new to XML-RPC, here is a brief description of this protocol.
    XML-RPC is a way to execute functions on a different machine. Both the
    client's request and listeners response are wrapped up in XML and sent
    over HTTP. Because the XML-RPC conversation is in XML, the
    implementation languages of the server (here called a *listener*), and
    the client can be different. This can be a powerful and simple way to
    have very different platforms work together without acrimony. Implicit
    in the use of XML-RPC is a contract or API that an XML-RPC listener
    implements and an XML-RPC client calls. The API needs to list not only
    the various procedures that can be called, but also the XML-RPC
    datatypes expected for input and output. Remember that although Perl is
    permissive about datatyping, other languages are not. Unforuntately, the
    XML-RPC spec doesn't say how to document the API. It is recommended that
    the author of a Perl XML-RPC listener should at least use POD to explain
    the API. This allows for the programmatic generation of a clean web
    page.

METHODS
    new( *OPTIONS* )
        This is the class constructor. As is traditional, it returns a
        blessed reference to a *Frontier::Responder* object. It expects
        arguments to be given like a hash (Perl's named parameter
        mechanism). To be effective, populate the "methods" parameter with a
        hashref that has API procedure names as keys and subroutine
        references as values. See the SYNOPSIS for a sample usage.

    answer()
        In order to parse the request and execute the procedure, this method
        must be called. It returns a XML string that contains the
        procedure's response. In a typical CGI program, this string will
        simply be printed to STDOUT.

SEE ALSO
    perl(1), Frontier::RPC2(3)

    <http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/code/rpc.html>

AUTHOR
    Ken MacLeod <ken AT bitsko.us> wrote the underlying RPC library.

    Joe Johnston <jjohn AT cs.edu> wrote an adaptation of the
    Frontier::Daemon class to create this CGI XML-RPC listener class.