ROC - Remote Object Call

ROC is thin wrapper around SimpleXMLRPCServer allowing to manipulate remote objects like they are local.

Usage

Given you have remote_class.py, that contains class RemoteClass on machine A with ip 192.168.1.2. You want to serve it through ROC on port 1234. After that you want to access it from machine B

On machine A in OS shell execute:

$ python -m "roc" -m remote_class.py -p 1234

On machine B in python interactive shell execute:

>>> from roc.client import server_proxy, remote_module
>>> proxy = server_proxy(host='192.168.1.2', port=1234)
>>> RModule = remote_module(proxy)

So now, RModule is like locally imported module, and you can access all classes, that machine A serves through it.

The code executed on machine B:

remote_instance = RModule.RemoteClass(1, 2, 3)

Will instantiate class RemoteClass from module remote_class.py on machine A. Then it will bind it to remote_instance variable on machine B.

From now every method called on remote_instance will be executed on machine A.

When you finished, call proxy.shutdown() to, well, shut down remote ROC server.

Bit Of History

ROC development was started to support acceptance testing of distributed systems with FitNesse, waferslim and vagrant System infrastucture may be described as follows:

• Host machine running FitNesse server and SLIM server;
• Set of guests, that are provisioned by vagrant with ROC servers;

When hosts' fixture is invoked by SLIM server, it can access guests' roc servers. That makes testing of distributed systems transparent and easy.