Applications written in most non-Java languages will use the Plastic XML-RPC interface. With apologies to these developers, the Plastic specification is currently written in Javadoc. This page offers guidance on how to translate the Javadoc into XML-RPC, and is extracted from Appendix C of the Plastic Specification.
See also the Plastic in... page to see if there is already example code showing how to use PLASTIC in your language of choice.
The XML-RPC method names are the same as for Java-RMI,
except that: the client method
org.votech.plastic.PlasticListener.perform
maps to perform, and the hub methods beginning
org.votech.plastic.PlasticHubListener.* map to
plastic.hub.*.
Since a message transmitted using the Java-RMI communication protocol must have precisely the same meaning as an equivalent one transmitted using XML-RPC, all message arguments and return values must be losslessly translatable between Java objects and XML-RPC value elements. Therefore only those Java object types which have exact equivalents in XML-RPC may be used in message argument lists and return values. Behaviour of the Hub if it receives a message with invalid argument types is undefined. The following table lists the correspondence between the two forms; the Hub will transform between these types when translating a message or response from one communication protocol to the other.
| Java Type | XML Tag Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Integer | i4, or int | A 32-bit, signed, and non-null, integer value. |
| Boolean | boolean | A non-null, boolean value |
| String | string | A string, non-null. |
| Double | double | A signed, non-null, double precision, floating point number. |
| java.util.Map | struct | A key value pair. The keys are strings. The values may be any valid data type, including another map. |
| java.util.List | array | An array of objects. The array elements may be any valid data type, including another array. |