phpPatterns.com has a new post this morning concerning a bit of XML-RPC fun he had when trying to make a connection between two services. Of course, none of the implementations seemed to fit quite right, but one showed promise - it just needed to be hacked a bit.

The altered version of the Incutio XML-RPC library for PHP was his choice for a starting place because it makes great use of reflection plus supports most of the XML-RPC spec extensions (most importantly, system.multiCall). He then goes on to talk about the modification of the code, what he changed, as well as why he made the changes. The idea was to make a more robust library that can handle filters both server and client side on the XML streams, a different library for HTTP requests (that can allow authentication through a proxy), and some increased debugging code that allows for much simpler debugging.

It's good to see that the author opted to start with a foundation that was already in place instead of working up his own. Too many PHP coders are of the type that "if it's not mine from the start, I won't use it". One of the keys to providing a good set of libraries (what PEAR is supposed to be) for the PHP world is this willingness to work with other people's code and improve on that...