XML Web Services - Java 6 - page 536

After Classpath has been configured, you can begin using Apache XML-RPC classes in
your Java programs. The easiest way to refer to these classes is to use an import state-
ment to make a package available, as in the following statement:

import org.apache.xmlrpc.*;

This makes it possible to refer to the classes in the main package, org.apache.xmlrpc ,
without using the full package name. You'll work with this package in the next two
sections.

If Apache XML-RPC doesn't suit your needs, you can choose from
more than two dozen other implementations. XML-RPC.Com
includes a directory of XML-RPC implementations in Java, C++,
PHP, and other languages. To see the list, visit the website
http://www.xmlrpc.com and choose the Implementations hyper-
link.

NOTE

Using an XML-RPC Web Service
An XML-RPC client is a program that connects to a server, calls a method on a program
on that server, and stores the result.

Using Apache XML-RPC, the process is comparable to calling any other method in
Java—you don't have to create an XML request, parse an XML response, or connect to
the server using one of Java's networking classes.

In the org.apache.xmlrpc package, the XmlRpcClient class represents a client. An
XmlRpcClient object can be created in three ways, each of which requires the URL of
the server:

XmlRpcClient( String ) —Create a client connecting to an address specified by the
String , which must be a valid web address (such as http://www.example.com) or
web address and port number (such as http://www.example.com:2274)

n

XmlRpcClient( URL ) —Create a client connecting to the specified URL object

n

XmlRpcClient( String , int ) —Create a client connecting to the specified host-
name ( String ) and port number ( int )

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The two constructors that require a String argument throw java.net.
MalformedURLException exceptions if the argument is not a valid web URL.