This document describes GNU Guile-RPC version 0.3. It was last updated in August 2008.
GNU Guile-RPC is a framework for distributed programming under GNU Guile. It is a pure Scheme implementation of the ONC RPC standard, i.e., the “Open Network Computing” Remote Procedure Call standard. ONC RPC is standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as RFC 1831. It is based on the External Data Representation standard (XDR), known as RFC 4506 (see References).
Remote procedure calls allow programs on different, potentially remote machines to interact together. A remote procedure call is the invocation of the procedure of a program located on a remote host (the RPC server), as the name implies. Doing so requires the procedure arguments on the client-side to be encoded, or marshalled, i.e., converted to a representation suitable for transfer over the network. On the server-side, upon reception of the RPC, those arguments must be decoded or unmarshalled, i.e., converted back to a form that is directly understandable by the server program—for instance, data using Scheme data types, should the server program be written in Scheme. The value returned by the RPC server must be encoded and decoded similarly.
When using the ONC RPC protocol, the way data items are encoded is dictated by the XDR standard. This encoding has the advantage of being particularly compact, allowing for relatively low bandwidth requirements and fast implementations, especially compared to more verbose RPC protocols such as XML-RPC and SOAP.
The XDR encoding is not self-describing, i.e., it is impossible given an arbitrary XDR encoded sequence to determine the XDR type of the encoded data. This is different from D-Bus, for example, which uses a compact and self-describing encoding. In practice, this is sufficient for a wide range of applications.
GNU Guile-RPC provides an easy access to the ONC RPC protocol for the Guile Scheme programmer. In particular, it allows standard Scheme types to be mapped to XDR data types, so that Scheme objects are easily encoded to or decoded from XDR.
Please send bug reports, comments and patches to the Guile-RPC mailing list.
The GNU Guile-RPC web page is located at http://www.gnu.org/software/guile-rpc/. You can obtain copy of GNU Guile-RPC from ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guile-rpc/.
In order to use GNU Guile-RPC, all that is needed is GNU Guile 1.8 along with the R6RS library package for Guile 1.8, known as Guile-R6RS-Libs1.
Before version 1.8.3, Guile 1.8 did not contain an implementation of SRFI-35. Thus, if you are using one of these versions of Guile, you need to install Guile-Lib, which contains the relevant module.
GNU Guile-RPC comes with a compiler for the XDR/RPC interface description language (see Invoking grpc-compile). To use that, Guile-Lib version 0.1.7 or later is needed2.
This section illustrates how ONC RPC clients and servers can be
implemented using Guile-RPC. ONC RPC defines a language to describe
RPCs and the data types they depend on (see RFC 4506, Section 6 and RFC 1831, Section 11). This
language, which we refer to as the XDR/RPC language or simply
RPC language, is essentially an interface description
language (IDL). It resembles the C programming language and borrows
C's type definition constructs and adds the program and
version constructs that introduce RPC definitions.
Consider the following RPC definition, written using the XDR/RPC language:
struct result_t
{
int integer_part;
unsigned int decimal_part;
};
program ARITHMETIC_PROGRAM
{
version ARITHMETIC_VERSION
{
/* Return the integer part and the 1000th of the
given double-precision floating point number. */
result_t split_number (double) = 1;
} = 0;
} = 80000;
It defines a simple RPC interface named ARITHMETIC
which contains only one procedure called split_number (). The
interface itself has a program number that identifies it (here,
80000). Normally, program numbers below 20000000 (hexadecimal) are
assigned by Sun Microsystems, Inc. and thus should not be used unless
the number has been properly registered (see RFC 1831,
for details). It also has a version number (here, 0) that is
user-defined and should be increased when the interface changes (e.g.,
when procedures are added, modified, etc.). Finally, the procedure
split_number () has a procedure number (here, 1) that allows it
to be distinguished from other procedures.
People vaguely familiar with the C programming language should have guessed by now that this simple interface defines a procedure that takes a double-precision floating-point number and returns a structure that contains two fields.
Client and server creation are two-step. Since the first step—data
type definition—is the same for both, that leaves us with a total of
three steps, described below. Nicely, each of these steps can be
automated using the XDR/RPC language compiler (see grpc-compile).
More details about the XDR type definition as well as client and server creation are available in the API reference (see API Reference).
Before actually creating a client or server for this interface, one must define the types it uses. The simplest way to define one or several data types is to pipe their definition in XDR/RPC language through the compiler (see grpc-compile):
$ grpc-compile --xdr --constants < input.x > types.scm
Given the description from input.x in RPC language, this command
generates code that provides access to the constants and data types
defined therein. The resulting Scheme code, types.scm, can then
be loaded in other Scheme files (see Loading).
In addition, code in types.scm depends on Guile-RPC modules that it uses at run-time. Thus, it must first import the relevant modules:
(use-modules (rpc xdr)
(rpc xdr types))
Then, the result_t type is defined (this is the code generated by
the compiler but it can also be written “by hand”):
(define result-type
(make-xdr-struct-type (list xdr-integer ;; `integer_part'
xdr-unsigned-integer))) ;; `decimal_part'
Producing a client to invoke split_number () is as simple as
this:
(use-modules (rpc rpc))
(define invoke-split-number
(make-synchronous-rpc-call 80000 0 ;; program and version
1 ;; procedure number
xdr-double ;; argument type
result-type))
Again, this definition, minus the use-modules clause, can
alternatively be generated by the compiler from the RPC description in
XDR/RPC language (see grpc-compile):
$ grpc-compile --client < input.x > client.scm
Once this is done, invoking the procedure is as simple as this:
(invoke-split-number 3.14 #x7777 socket)
The first argument to invoke-split-number is the argument of
split_number (); the second argument is a transaction ID, i.e.,
an arbitrarily chosen number that identifies the remote procedure
call; the third argument should be an output port, typically one
bound to a connection to the RPC server:
(define socket (socket PF_INET SOCK_STREAM 0))
(connect socket AF_INET INADDR_LOOPBACK 6666)
This example creates an IPv4 connection to the local host on port 6666 (see Network Sockets and Communication).
On success, invoke-split-number returns a two-element list
where the first element corresponds to the integer_part field
of the result and the second element correspond to the
decimal_part field of the result, both represented as Scheme
exact integers.
Creating a TCP server for our RPC interface should be quite easy as well. We can re-use our previous type definitions (see Defining Data Types). Then, all we have to do is to create a definition for our program.
(use-modules (rpc rpc server))
(define (split-number-handler number)
;; Handle a `split-number' request.
(let* ((int (floor number))
(dec (floor (* 1000 (- number int)))))
(list (inexact->exact int)
(inexact->exact dec))))
(define my-rpc-program
;; Define our RPC program.
(let* ((proc (make-rpc-procedure 1 xdr-double result-type
split-number-handler))
(version (make-rpc-program-version 0 (list proc))))
(make-rpc-program 80000 (list version))))
Alternatively, using the compiler allows the above definition of my-rpc-program to be automatically generated from the XDR/RPC definition file (see grpc-compile):
$ grpc-compile --server < input.x > server.scm
However, there is a slight difference compared to the above
“hand-written” approach: server.scm does not contain the actual
definition of my-rpc-program since it does not know about your
split-number-handler procedure. Instead, given the RPC/XDR
definition given earlier, it contains a
make-ARITHMETIC-PROGRAM-server procedure; this procedure can be
passed a list associating RPC names to Scheme procedures, and returns
the resulting RPC program object:
(define my-rpc-program
(make-ARITHMETIC-PROGRAM-server
`(("ARITHMETIC_VERSION" ;; specify the target version
;; list all supported RPCs for this version
("split_number" . ,split-number-handler)))))
As can be seen, using the compiler-generated server stub, one doesn't have to deal explicitly with program, version and RPC numbers, which clarifies the code.
Finally, we can make the server listen for incoming connections and handle client requests, using Guile's networking primitives.
;; Creating a listening TCP socket.
(define server-socket (socket PF_INET SOCK_STREAM 0))
;; Listen for connections on 127.0.0.1, port 6666.
(bind server-socket AF_INET INADDR_LOOPBACK 6666)
(listen server-socket 1024)
;; Go ahead and serve requests.
(run-stream-rpc-server (list (cons server-socket my-rpc-program))
1000000 ;; a one-second timeout
#f ;; we don't care about closed connections
(lambda () ;; our idle thunk
(format #t "one second passed~%")))
And now we're all set: We have a working TCP client and server for
this wonderful RPC interface! This would work similarly for other
stream-oriented transports such as Unix-domain sockets: only the
socket and bind calls need to be adapted.
This section first details facilities available to manipulate XDR types. It then describes Scheme procedures that should be used to build ONC RPC clients and servers.
Guile-RPC makes use of the SRFI-34 exception mechanism along with SRFI-35 error conditions to deal with the various protocol errors3. Thus, users are expected to use these mechanisms to handle the error conditions described in the following sections. Hopefully, in most cases, error conditions raised by Guile-RPC code provide users with detailed information about the error.
This section describes how XDR types are represented in Guile-RPC, as well as how one can encode Scheme values to XDR and decode XDR binary data to Scheme values.
The XDR standard defines various basic data types and allows for the definition of compound data types (“structs”), fixed-size and variable-size arrays as well as “unions”. Fixed-size arrays and structs can actually be thought as the same type: Their size if known in advance and they are encoded as the succession of the data they contain. Thus, those types can be summarized as 4 great classes: “basic” types, variable-length arrays, structs and unions.
The (rpc xdr) module provides facilities to create Scheme objects
representing XDR data types and to manipulate them. These Scheme
objects, described below, are all immutable, i.e., they cannot be
modified after creation.
This returns an
<xdr-basic-type>object describing a type whose encoding fits on size octets, and which is encoded/decoded using the encoder and decoder procedures. type-pred should be a predicate checking the validity of an input Scheme value for encoding into this type.Optionally, vector-encoder and vector-decoder can be passed and should be procedures that efficiently encode/decode sequences of data items of this type (for instance, the vector decoder could use the
bytevector->int-listprocedure of the(r6rs bytevector)module to speed up decoding). The vector encoder is invoked as(vector-encodertype value bv index)while the vector decoder is invoked as(vector-decodertype count port).Users should normally not need to define new basic types since all the basic types defined by XDR are already available in
(rpc xdr types)(see XDR Standard Data Types). Thus, we will not describe its use further.
Return a new XDR struct type made of a sequence of XDR data items whose types are listed in base-types.
Struct types encode from/decode to Scheme lists whose length is that of base-types.
Return an object describing an XDR variable-length array of elements of types base-type (again, an XDR type object). If max-element-count is a number, then it describes the maximum number of items of type base-type that are allow in actual arrays of this type. If base-type is
#f, then arrays of this type may contain up to 2^32 - 1 items of type base-type.Vector types are encoded from generalized vectors such as Scheme vectors, SRFI-4 vectors or strings (see Generalized Vectors). By default, vector types decode to vectors, but any other kind of generalized vector can be used: it only needs to be specified as the vector-decoder argument of
make-xdr-basic-typefor the corresponding base type. Of course, SRFI-4 vectors, for example, may only be used when an XDR integer vector with a matching integer range is expected.If max-element-count is specified and a vector to be encoded contains more than max-element-count elements, then an
&xdr-vector-size-exceeded-errorerror condition is raised. Likewise, if XDR data to be decoded describes vectors larger than max-element-count, this error condition is raised.
Return a new XDR discriminated union type, using discr-type as the discriminant type (which must be a 32-bit basic type) and discr/type-alist to select the “arm” type depending on the discriminant value. If no suitable value is found in discr/type-alist and default-type is not
#f, then default type is used as the arm type.Union types encode from/decode to Scheme pairs whose
caris the discriminant's value and whosecdris the actual union value.
Return the type that should be used for union's arm given discriminant (a Scheme value).
Sometimes, one may want to define recursive types, i.e., types that refer to themselves. This is particularly useful to implement lists. For example, in XDR language, a list of integers can be defined as follows:
struct integer_list_t
{
int x;
integer_list_t *next;
};
This notation is a shortcut for the following structure:
struct integer_list_t
{
int x;
union switch (bool opted)
{
case TRUE:
integer_list_t value;
case FALSE:
void;
} next;
};
The integer_list_t type references itself. Defining it using our
API seems impossible at first: one cannot pass a self-reference to
make-xdr-struct-type (since the object is not yet created!), and
the self-reference cannot be added after the fact since objects returned
by make-xdr-struct-type are immutable.
The API addresses this problem by allowing thunks (zero-argument
procedures) to be used as types. Together with Scheme's letrec
recursive binding construct or a top-level define (see letrec), it makes it possible to create such
recursive types:
(letrec ((integer-list
(make-xdr-struct-type
(list xdr-integer
(make-xdr-union-type xdr-boolean
`((TRUE . ,(lambda ()
integer-list))
(FALSE . ,xdr-void))
#f)))))
integer-list)
The trick here is that using the thunk effectively defers the evaluation of the self-reference4.
It is often useful to know the size in octets it takes to encode a given value according to an XDR type. However, as we just saw, the size of some XDR types (variable-length arrays and unions) cannot be known in advance: The encoding size depends on the actual value to encode. The following procedure allow the computation of the size of the XDR representation of some value.
Return the size (in octets) of type when applied to value. type must be an XDR type object returned by one of the above procedures, while value should be a Scheme value suitable for encoding with type.
The following section lists the standard XDR data types.
All the basic data types defined by XDR are defined in the (rpc
xdr types) module.
XDR's 32-bit and 64-bit signed and unsigned integer types. This type decodes to/encodes from Scheme exact numbers.
32-bit and 64-bit IEEE-754 floating point numbers. This type decodes to/encodes from Scheme inexact numbers. Note that XDR also defines a “quadruple-precision floating point type” (i.e., 128-bit long) that is currently not available (FIXME).
The “void” type that yields zero bits. Any Scheme value is suitable as an input when encoding with this type. When decoding this type, the
%voidvalue (which may be compared viaeq?) is returned.
XDR provides support for “enumerations”, similar to that found in C. An enumeration type maps symbols to integers and are actually encoded as 32-bit integers.
Return an enumeration type that obeys the symbol-integer mapping provided in enum-alist which should be a list of symbol-integer pairs. The returned type decodes to/encodes from Scheme symbols, as provided in enum-alist. Upon decoding/encoding of an enumeration, an
&xdr-enumeration-erroris raised if an incorrect value (i.e., one not listed in enum-alist) is found.
XDR's boolean type which is an enumeration. It encodes to/decodes from Scheme symbols
TRUEandFALSE.
Several fixed-size and variable-size are predefined in the standard.
Return a fixed-length “opaque” array of size octets. An opaque array is simply a sequence of octets.
The returned XDR type object is actually an
<xdr-struct-type>object. Thus, it encodes from/decodes to Scheme lists of exact integers. Conversion to a Scheme string, if needed, is left to the user.
Return a variable-length opaque array. As for
make-xdr-vector-type(see XDR Type Representations), limit can be either a number specifying the maximum number of elements that can be held by the created type, or#fin which case the variable-length array can hold up to 2^32 - 1 octets.The returned XDR type object is actually an
<xdr-vector-type>object. Thus, it encodes from/decodes to Scheme vectors of exact integers.
This is a synonym of
make-xdr-variable-length-opaque-arraysince XDR's string type actually represents ASCII strings, i.e., sequences of octets.
These convenience variables contain the unlimited variable-length opaque array.
The following primitives are exported by the (rpc xdr) module.
They implement the encoding of Scheme values to XDR data types, and
the decoding of binary XDR data to Scheme values. The exact mapping
between XDR data types and Scheme data types has been discussed
earlier.
Encode value (a suitable Scheme value), using XDR type type, into bytevector bv at index. Return the index where encoding ended.
bv should be an R6RS bytevector large enough to hold the XDR representation of value according to type. To that end, users may rely on
xdr-type-size(see XDR Type Representations).Error conditions sub-classing
&xdr-errormay be raised during encoding. The exact exceptions that may be raised are type-dependent and have been discussed in the previous sections.
Decode from port (a binary input port) a value of XDR type type. Return the decoded value.
Error conditions sub-classing
&xdr-errormay be raised during encoding. The exact exceptions that may be raised are type-dependent and have been discussed in the previous sections.
This section describes facilities available for the creation of ONC RPC clients and servers, as well as lower-level details about raw RPC messages.
Basic building blocks for the creation of RPC clients are provided by
the (rpc rpc) module. The easiest way to build an RPC client
is through make-synchronous-rpc-call.
Return a procedure that may be applied to a list of arguments, transaction ID (any unsigned number representable on 32 bits), and I/O port, to make a synchronous RPC call to the remote procedure numbered procedure in program, version version. On success, the invocation result is eventually returned. Otherwise, an error condition is raised. arg-type and result-type should be XDR type objects (see XDR Type Representations).
Error conditions that may be raised include those related to XDR encoding and decoding (see XDR Encoding and Decoding), as well as RPC-specific error conditions inheriting from
&rpc-error(i.e., conditions that pass therpc-error?predicate). These are detailed inassert-successful-reply.
For an example, see Creating the Client.
It is also possible to create “one-way” calls, i.e., RPC calls that do
not expect a reply (i.e., no return value, not even void). This
is useful, for instance, to implement batched calls where clients do not
wait for the server to reply (see Section 7.4.1 of RFC 1831). Asynchronous calls can be implemented in terms of this, too.
Similar to
make-synchronous-rpc-call, except that the returned procedure does not wait for a reply.
The (rpc rpc server) module provides helpful facilities for
building an ONC RPC server. In particular, it provides tools to
decode RPC call messages, as well as an event loop mechanisms that
allows RPC calls to be automatically dispatched to the corresponding
Scheme handlers.
Return an
<rpc-call>object that denotes the procedure call requested in call-msg (the result of an(xdr-decode rpc-message port)operation). If call-msg is not an appropriate RPC call message, an error condition is raised.The error condition raised may be either
onc-rpc-version-mismatch-error?orrpc-invalid-call-message-error?.The returned object can be queried using the
rpc-call-procedures described below.
Return the program, version or procedure number of call.
Return the credentials and verifier provided by the client for call. FIXME: As of version 0.3, this information is not usable.
The following procedures allow the description of RPC “programs”. Such descriptions can then be readily used to produced a full-blown RPC processing loop.
Return a new object describing the RPC program identified by number and consisting of the versions listed in versions.
Return a new object describing the RPC program version identified by number and consisting of the procedures listed in procedures.
Return a new object describing a procedure whose number is number, whose argument type is argument-xdr-type and whose result type is result-xdr-type (see XDR Type Representations). handler should be a procedure that will be invoked upon reception of an RPC call for that procedure.
If synchronous RPC processing is used, i.e., through
serve-one-stream-request, then handler is passed the decoded argument and should return a result type that may be encoded as result-xdr-type. If asynchronous processing is used, i.e., throughserve-one-stream-request/asynchronous, then handler is passed the decoded argument along with a continuation that must be invoked to actually return the result.If one-way? is passed and is true, then the returned procedure is marked as “one-way” (see
make-one-way-rpc-call). For one-way procedures,run-stream-rpc-serverand similar procedures ignores the return value of handler and don't send any reply when procedure number is invoked.
Once a program, its versions and procedures have been defined, an RPC server for that program (and possibly others) can be run using the following procedures.
Run a full-blown connection-oriented (i.e.,
SOCK_STREAM, be itPF_UNIXorPF_INET) RPC server for the given listening sockets and RPC programs. sockets+rpc-programs should be a list of listening socket-RPC program pairs (where “RPC programs” are objects as returned bymake-rpc-program). timeout should be a number of microseconds that the loop should wait for input; when no input is available, idle-thunk is invoked, thus at most every timeout microseconds. If close-connection-proc is a procedure, it is called when a connection is being closed is passed the corresponding<stream-connection>object.
While an RPC server is running over a stream-oriented transport such as
TCP using run-stream-rpc-server, its procedure handlers can get
information about the current connection and client:
This procedure returns a
<stream-connection>object describing the current TCP connection (when within arun-stream-rpc-serverinvocation). This object can be queried with the procedures described below.
Return the I/O port (not the TCP port) for connection.
Return the IP address of the peer/client of connection (see Network Socket Address).
Return the RPC program object corresponding to connection.
For a complete RPC server example, Creating the Server.
The run-stream-rpc-server mechanism is limited to servers
managing only RPC connections, and only over stream-oriented
transports. Should your server need to handle other input sources, a
more geneneral event handling mechanism is available. This works by
first creating a set of I/O managers and then passing
run-input-event-loop a list of I/O manager-file descriptor pairs
to actually handle I/O events.
Return an I/O manager. When data is available for reading, read-handler will be called and passed a port to read from; when an exception occurs on a port, exception-handler is called and passed the failing port.
Return, respectively, the exception handler and the read handler of manager.
Run an input event loop based on fd+manager-list, a list of pairs of input ports (or file descriptors) and I/O managers. I/O managers are invoked are invoked and passed the corresponding port when data becomes readable or when an exception occurs. I/O manager handlers can:
- return
#f, in which case the port and I/O manager are removed from the list of watched ports;- return a pair containing an input port and I/O manager, in which case this pair is added to the list of watched ports;
- return true, in which case the list of watched ports remains unchanged.
When timeout (a number of microseconds) is reached, idle-thunk is invoked. If timeout is
#f, then an infinite timeout is assumed and idle-thunk is never run. The event loop returns when no watched port is left.
The event loop provided by run-input-event-loop should cover a
wide range of applications. However, it will turn out to be
insufficient in situations where tasks must be executed at specific
times, and where the interval between consecutive executions varies over
the program's lifetime.
Finally, a lower-level mechanism is available to handle a single incoming RPC:
Serve one RPC for program, reading the RPC from port (using the record-marking protocol) and writing the reply to port. If port is closed or the end-of-file was reached, an
&rpc-connection-lost-erroris raised.
Same as
serve-one-stream-requestexcept that the RPC is to be handled in an asynchronous fashion.Concretely, the procedure handler passed to
make-rpc-procedureis called with two arguments instead of one: the first one is the actual procedure argument, and the second one is a one-argument procedure that must be invoked to return the procedure's result—in other words, procedure call processing is decoupled from procedure call return using continuation-passing style.
The (rpc rpc types) module provides a representation of the
various XDR types defined in the standard to represent RPC messages
(see References). We only describe the most important ones as
well as procedures from the (rpc rpc) module that help use it.
This variable contains a XDR struct type representing all possible RPC messages—the
rpc_msgstruct type defined in RFC 1831. By “rpc message” we mean the header that is transmitted before the actual procedure argument to describe the procedure call being made.Roughly, this header contains a transaction ID allowing clients to match call/reply pairs, plus information describing either the call or the reply being made. Calls essentially contain a program, version and procedure numbers. Replies, on the other hand, can be more complex since they can describe a large class of errors.
This variable is bound to an XDR enumeration. Its two possible values are
CALLandREPLY(both represented in Scheme using symbols), denoting a procedure call and a reply to a procedure call, respectively.
Return an
rpc-messagedatum. type should be eitherCALLorREPLY(the two values of therpc-message-typeenumeration). The arguments args are message-type-specific. For example, a message denoting a procedure call to procedure number 5 of version 1 of program 77 can be created as follows:(define my-call-msg (make-rpc-message #x123 ;; the transaction ID 'CALL ;; the message type 77 1 5))It can then be encoded in the usual way (see XDR Encoding and Decoding):
(let* ((size (xdr-type-size rpc-message my-call-msg)) (bv (make-bytevector size))) (xdr-encode! bv 0 rpc-message my-call-msg) ;;; ... )Likewise, a reply message denoting a successful RPC call can be produced as follows:
(make-rpc-message xid 'REPLY 'MSG_ACCEPTED 'SUCCESS)It is worth noting that in practice, “messages” of type rpc-message are followed by additional data representing either the procedure call arguments (if the message is a
CALLmessage) or the procedure return value (if the message is aREPLYmessage).
Return true if rpc-msg (an RPC message as returned by a previous
(xdr-decode rpc-message port)call) is a valid reply for the invocation labeled with transaction ID xid indicating that it was accepted. If xid is#t, any reply transaction ID is accepted and it is returned (provided the rest of the message denotes an accepted message). On failure, an appropriate error condition is raised.The error conditions that may be raised obey
rpc-error?andrpc-call-error?. More precisely, error conditions include the following:
rpc-program-unavailable-error?- If rpc-msg denotes the fact that the program requested by the corresponding RPC call is not available.
rpc-program-mismatch-error?- If the corresponding RPC call requested a program version that is not available. The procedures
rpc-program-mismatch-error:low-versionandrpc-program-mismatch-error:high-versionreturn, respectively, the lowest and highest version numbers supported by the remote server.rpc-procedure-unavailable-error?- If the corresponding RPC call requested a procedure that is not available.
rpc-garbage-arguments-error?- If the remote server failed to decode the procedure arguments.
rpc-system-error?- If the remote server failed to allocate enough memory for argument decoding, for instance.
The ONC RPC standard defines a record-marking protocol for
stream-oriented transport layers such as TCP whereby (1) each RPC
message is sent out as a single record and (2) where records may
be split into several fragments. This allows implementations to
“delimit one message from another in order to detect and possibly
recover from protocol errors” (see RFC 1831, Section 10).
This protocol is implemented by the (rpc rpc transports)
module. It is automatically used by the high-level client and server
facilities, namely make-synchronous-rpc-call and run-stream-rpc-server. The available facilities are described
below.
Send the RPC message of len octets encoded at offset offset in bv (a bytevector) to port. This procedure sends the len octets of the record without fragmenting them.
This procedure is a generalization of
send-rpc-record.Return a procedure that sends data according to the record marking standard, chopping its input bytevector into fragments of size fragment-len octets.
Return a binary input port that proxies port in order to implement decoding of the record marking standard (RFC 1831, Section 10).
GNU Guile-RPC provides client-side and/or server-side of some commonly found ONC RPC program, which are described below. Currently, this is limited to the portmapper interface, but other interfaces (e.g., “mount”, NFSv2) may follow.
The (rpc rpc portmap) module implements the widespread
portmapper RPC program defined in RFC 1833 (see RFC 1833, Section 3). As the name suggests, the portmapper
interface allows servers to be queried for the association between an
RPC service and the port it is listening to. It also allows clients to
query the list of services registered.
In practice, most machines run a system-wide portmap daemon on
port 111 (TCP or UDP), and it is this server that is queried for
information about locally hosted RPC programs. The grpc-rpcinfo
program is a portmapper client that can be used to query a portmapper
server (see the grpc-rpcinfo tool)
Note that registering RPC programs with the portmapper is optional: it is basically a directory mechanism that allows servers to be located quite easily, but other existing mechanisms could be used for that purpose, e.g., decentralized service discovery (see service discovery with DNS-SD in Guile-Avahi).
The module exports client-side procedures, as returned by
make-synchronous-rpc-call (see Building an RPC Client), for
the various portmapper procedures. They are listed below.
Invoke the
nullRPC over port, ignoring arg, and return%void.
Invoke the
setRPC over port with argument arg. The invoked server should register the RPC program specified by arg, where arg must be an XDR struct (i.e., a Scheme list) containing these four elements: the RPC program number, its version number, its protocol and its port. The protocol number should be one ofIPPROTO_TCPorIPPROTO_UDP(see Network Sockets and Communication). An XDR boolean is returned, indicating whether the request successful.
Invoke the
unsetRPC over port with argument arg. The invoked server should unregister the RPC program specified by arg, where arg must have the same form as forportmapper-set. Again, an XDR boolean is returned, indicating whether the request was successful.
Invoke the
get-portRPC over port with argument arg, which must have the same form as previously mentioned (except that its port number is ignored). The invoked server returns an unsigned integer indicating the port of that RPC program.
Invoke the
dumpRPC over port, ignoring arg. The invoked server should return a list of 4-element lists describing the registered RPC programs. Those four element list are the same as forportmapper-setandportmapper-get, namely the RPC program number and version, its protocol and its port.
Invoke the call-it procedure over port. Quoting RFC 1833, this procedure “allows a client to call another remote procedure on the same machine without knowing the remote procedure's port number”. Concretely, it makes the portmapper invoke over UDP the procedure of the program matching the description in arg, where arg is an XDR struct (i.e., a Scheme list) containing an RPC program and version number, a procedure number, and an opaque array denoting the procedure arguments (an
xdr-variable-length-opaque-array).On success, it returns a struct consisting of the port number of the matching program and an opaque array representing the RPC reply. On failure, it does not return. Therefore, this synchronous call version may be inappropriate. We recommend that you do not use it.
The portmap module also provides convenience functions to
retrieve the symbolic name associated with common RPC program numbers.
The association between program numbers and their name is usually stored
in /etc/rpc on Unix systems and it can be parsed using the
read-rpc-service-list procedure.
Return a list of name-program pairs read from port (e.g., the /etc/rpc file), showing the connection between an RPC program human-readable name and its program number.
Lookup RPC program numbered program in service-list (a list as returned by
read-rpc-service-list) and return its human-readable name.
Lookup RPC program named program in service-list (a list as returned by
read-rpc-service-list) and return its RPC program number.
This section describes the compiler's programming interface. Most of the time, its command-line interface is all is needed; it is described in grpc-compile. This section is intended for users who need more flexibility than is provided by grpc-compile.
The compiler consists of a lexer, a parser and two compiler back-ends. The lexer separates input data into valid XDR/RPC language tokens; the parser then validates the input syntax and produces an abstract syntax tree of the input. Finally, the back-ends are responsible for actually “compiling” the input into something usable by the programmer. The back-end used by the grpc-compile command is the code generation back-end. In addition, an experimental run-time compiler back-end is available, making it possible to compile dynamically definitions in the XDR/RPC language at run-time; this technology paves the way for a wide range of crazy distributed applications, the programmer's imagination being the only real limitation5.
The parser is available under the (rpc compiler parser) module.
The main procedure, rpc-language->sexp, reads XDR/RPC language
descriptions and returns the abstract syntax tree (AST) in the form of
an S-expression. The AST can be shown using the --intermediate
option of the grpc-compile command-line tool (see Invoking grpc-compile). Below is an illustration of the mapping between the
XDR/RPC language and the S-exp representation.
const SIZE = 10;
struct foo
{
int x;
enum { NO = 0, YES = 1 } y;
float z[SIZE];
};
... yields:
(define-constant "SIZE" 10)
(define-type
"foo"
(struct
("x" "int")
("y" (enum ("NO" 0) ("YES" 1)))
("z" (fixed-length-array "float" "SIZE"))))
Read a specification written in the XDR Language from port and return the corresponding sexp-based representation. This procedure can raise a
&compiler-errorexception (see below).
The behavior of the parser can be controlled using the *parser-options* parameter object:
This SRFI-39 parameter object must be a list of symbols or the empty list. Each symbol describes an option. For instance,
allow-unsignedinstructs the parser to recognizeunsignedas if it wereunsigned int(see Sun XDR/RPC language extensions).
Source location information is attached to the S-expressions returned by
rpc-language->sexp. It can be queried using the procedures
below. Note that not-only top-level S-expressions (such as
define-type or define-constant expressions) can be
queried, but also sub-expressions, e.g., the enum S-expression
above.
Return the source location associated with sexp or
#fif no source location information is available.
Return the line number, column number or file name from location loc, an object returned by
sexp-location.
In case of parse errors or other compiler errors, a
&compiler-error error condition (or an instance of a sub-type
thereof) may be raise.
Return the source location information associated with c, or
#fif that information is not available.
The code generation back-end is provided by the (rpc compiler)
module. Given an XDR/RPC description, it returns a list of
S-expressions, each of which is a top-level Scheme expression
implementing an element of the input description. These expressions are
meant to be dumped to a Scheme file; this is what the command-line
interface of the compiler does (see grpc-compile).
Here is an example XDR/RPC description and the resulting client code, as obtained, e.g., with grpc-compile --xdr --constants --client:
const max = 010;
struct foo
{
int x;
float y<max>;
};
=>
(define max 8)
(define foo
(make-xdr-struct-type
(list xdr-integer
(make-xdr-vector-type xdr-float max))))
As can be seen here, the generated code uses the run-time support routines described earlier (see Implementation of XDR); an optimization would consist in generating specialized code that does not depend on the run-time support, but it is not implemented yet.
This front-end consists of two procedures:
These procedures return a list of top-level Scheme expressions implementing input for an RPC client or, respectively, a server.
input can be either an input port, a string, or an AST as returned by
rpc-language->sexp(see Parser). If type-defs? is#t, then type definition code is produced; if constant-defs? is#t, then constant definition code is produced.Both procedures can raise error conditions having a sub-type of
&compiler-error.
The run-time compiler back-end is also provided by the (rpc
compiler) module. It reads XDR/RPC definitions and returns data
structures readily usable to deal with the XDR data types or RPC
programs described, at run-time. Actually, as of version
0.3, it does not have an API to deal with RPC programs, only
with XDR data types.
Read XDR type definitions from input and return an alist; element of the returned alist is a pair whose
caris a string naming an XDR data type and whosecdris an XDR data type object (see XDR Type Representations). input can be either an input port, a string, or an AST as returned byrpc-language->sexp(see Parser).This procedure can raise error conditions having a sub-type of
&compiler-error.
Here is an example of two procedures that, given XDR type definitions, decode (respectively encode) an object of that type:
(use-modules (rpc compiler)
(rpc xdr)
(r6rs bytevector)
(r6rs io ports))
(define (decode-data type-defs type-name port)
;; Read binary data from PORT as an object of type
;; TYPE-NAME whose definition is given in TYPE-DEFS.
(let* ((types (rpc-language->xdr-types type-defs))
(type (cdr (assoc type-name types))))
(xdr-decode type port)))
(define (encode-data type-defs type-name object)
;; Encode OBJECT as XDR data type named TYPE-NAME from
;; the XDR type definitions in TYPE-DEFS.
(let* ((types (rpc-language->xdr-types type-defs))
(type (cdr (assoc type-name types)))
(size (xdr-type-size type object))
(bv (make-bytevector size)))
(xdr-encode! bv 0 type object)
(open-bytevector-input-port bv)))
These procedures can then be used as follows:
(let ((type-defs (string-append "typedef hyper chbouib<>;"
"struct foo { "
" int x; float y; chbouib z;"
"};"))
(type-name "foo")
(object '(1 2.0 #(3 4 5))))
(equal? (decode-data type-defs type-name
(encode-data type-defs type-name
object))
object))
=>
#t
Note that in this example type-defs contains two type definitions, which is why the type-name argument is absolutely needed.
GNU Guile-RPC comes with stand-alone tools that can be used from the command-line.
grpc-compileThe grpc-compile command provides a simple command-line interface to the XDR/RPC language compiler (see Compiler). It reads a RPC definitions written in the XDR/RPC language on the standard input and, depending on the options, write Scheme code containing client, server, data type or constant definitions on the standard output.
rpcgen. These extensions include:
% line comments; these are actually treated
as special directives by rpcgen but they are simply ignored by
grpc-compile;
char type, equivalent to int;
unsigned type, equivalent to
unsigned int;
struct in type specifiers.
Also note that some XDR/RPC definition files (.x files)
originally designed to be used in C programs with rpcgen include
C preprocessor directives. Unlike rpcgen, which automatically
invokes cpp, such input files need to be piped through
cpp -P before being fed to grpc-compile.
Code generation options can be combined. For instance, the command line below writes data type and constant definitions as well as client stubs in a single file:
$ grpc-compile --xdr --constants --client < input.x > client-stubs.scm
The various pieces of generated code can also be stored in separate files. The following example shows how to create one file containing constant and type definitions, another one containing client stubs, and a third one containing server stubs. Since the two last files depend on the first one, care must be taken to load them beforehand.
$ grpc-compile --xdr --constants < input.x > types+constants.scm
$ echo '(load "types+constants.scm")' > client-stubs.scm
$ grpc-compile --client < input.x >> client-stubs.scm
$ echo '(load "types+constants.scm")' > server-stubs.scm
$ grpc-compile --server < input.x >> server-stubs.scm
In the future, there may be additional --use-module and
--define-module options to make it easier to use Guile's module
system in generated code.
grpc-rpcinfo
This program is equivalent to the rpcinfo program available on
most Unix systems and notably provided by the GNU C Library. In is a
client of the portmapper RPC program (see The Portmapper Program).
Among the options supported by rpcinfo, only a few of them are
supported at this moment:
Note that the host where the portmapper lives can be specified as the
last argument to grpc-rpcinfo:
# Query the portmapper at host `klimt'.
$ grpc-rpcinfo -p klimt
program vers proto port name
100000 2 tcp 111 portmapper
100000 2 udp 111 portmapper
$ grpc-rpcinfo -d 100000 2 klimt
ERROR: `portmapper-unset' failed FALSE
grpc-nfs-export
Guile-RPC comes with an example NFS (Network File System) server,
provided by the grpc-nfs-export command. More precisely, it
implements NFS version 2, i.e., the NFS_PROGRAM RPC program
version 2 along with the MOUNTPROG program version 1, which are
closely related (see RFC 1094). It is a TCP server.
Enough technical details. The important thing about
grpc-nfs-export is this: although it's of little use in one's
everyday life, this NFS server is nothing less than life-changing. It's
different from any file system you've seen before. It's the ultimate
debugging aid for any good Guile hacker.
The “file hierarchy” served by grpc-nfs-export is—guess
what?—Guile's module hierarchy! In other words, when mounting the
file system exported by grpc-nfs-export, the available files
are bindings, while directories represent modules
(see The Guile module system). The module hierarchy can also be browsed from the REPL using
Guile's nested-ref procedure. Here's a sample session:
$ ./grpc-nfs-export &
$ sudo mount -t nfs -o nfsvers=2,tcp,port=2049 localhost: /nfs/
$ ls /nfs/%app/modules/
guile/ guile-rpc/ guile-user/ ice-9/ r6rs/ rpc/ srfi/
$ ls /nfs/%app/modules/rpc/rpc/portmap/%module-public-interface/
lookup-rpc-service-name %portmapper-port
lookup-rpc-service-number %portmapper-program-number
portmapper-call-it portmapper-set
portmapper-dump portmapper-unset
portmapper-get-port %portmapper-version-number
portmapper-null read-rpc-service-list
$ cat /nfs/%app/modules/rpc/xdr/xdr-decode
#<procedure xdr-decode (type port)>
$ cat /nfs/%app/modules/rpc/xdr/%xdr-endianness
big
Here is the option reference:
mount connections on mount-port (default: 6666).
In addition, grpc-nfs-export can be passed the name of a
Scheme source file, in which case it will load that file in a separate
thread while still serving NFS and mount requests. This allows
the program's global variables to be monitored via the NFS mount.
As of version 0.3, this toy server exhibits poor
performance, notably when running ls (which translates into a
few readdir and many lookup RPCs, the latter being costly)
in directories containing a lot of files. This is probably partly due
to the use of TCP, and partly due to other inefficiencies that we hope
to fix soon.
RFC 1831RFC 4506RFC 1833RFC 1094This appendix is about Guile-RPC's portability. Of course, Guile-RPC can be ported to any OS/architecture Guile runs on. What this section deals with is portability among Scheme implementations.
Although implemented on top of GNU Guile, Guile-RPC uses mostly portable APIs such as SRFIs. Thus, it should be relatively easy to port to other Scheme implementations or to systems like Snow. Below are a few notes on portability, listing APIs and tools Guile-RPC depends on.
define-module and use-module clauses to some other
Scheme.
(r6rs bytevector) and
(r6rs io ports) modules of Guile-R6RS-Libs; the official R6RS
name of these modules is the same with rnrs in lieu of
r6rs. MzScheme, Larceny, Ikarus (among others) provide these
APIs.
(rpc xdr) module uses Guile's
generalized vectors API (see Generalized Vectors). This allows applications to use regular
vectors, SRFI-4 homogeneous vectors, arrays, etc., to represent XDR
variable-length arrays (see make-xdr-vector-type). On Scheme implementations that do not
support generalized vectors, regular vectors can be used instead.
(rpc compiler) module uses
Andrew K. Wright's pattern matcher, known as (ice-9 match) in
Guile. This pattern matcher is portable and available in many Scheme
implementations; alternative, compatible pattern matchers are also
available sometimes, e.g., in MzScheme.
(rpc compiler parser) module uses
Dominique Boucher's LALR parser generator, known as (text parse-lalr) in
Guile-Lib. This package is
available on most Scheme implementations and as a “snowball”.
(rpc compiler lexer) module was automatically
generated using Danny Dubé's SILex, a portable lexer generator.
(rpc rpc server), which contains a server event loop. This part
of the module would need porting to the target system, but it would be
quite easy to isolate the few features it depends on.
Portability patches can be posted to the Guile-RPC mailing list where they will be warmly welcomed!
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portmap daemon: The Portmapper Programrpc_msg struct type: ONC RPC Message Typesrpcgen: Invoking grpc-compileassert-successful-reply: ONC RPC Message Typescompiler-error:location: Parsercompiler-error?: Parsercurrent-stream-connection: Building an RPC Serveri/o-manager-exception-handler: Building an RPC Serveri/o-manager-read-handler: Building an RPC Serveri/o-manager?: Building an RPC Serverlocation-column: Parserlocation-file: Parserlocation-line: Parserlookup-rpc-service-name: The Portmapper Programlookup-rpc-service-number: The Portmapper Programmake-i/o-manager: Building an RPC Servermake-one-way-rpc-call: Building an RPC Clientmake-rpc-message: ONC RPC Message Typesmake-rpc-procedure: Building an RPC Servermake-rpc-program: Building an RPC Servermake-rpc-program-version: Building an RPC Servermake-rpc-record-sender: Record Marking Standardmake-synchronous-rpc-call: Building an RPC Clientmake-xdr-basic-type: XDR Type Representationsmake-xdr-enumeration: XDR Standard Data Typesmake-xdr-fixed-length-opaque-array: XDR Standard Data Typesmake-xdr-string: XDR Standard Data Typesmake-xdr-struct-type: XDR Type Representationsmake-xdr-union-type: XDR Type Representationsmake-xdr-variable-length-opaque-array: XDR Standard Data Typesmake-xdr-vector-type: XDR Type Representationsportmapper-call-it: The Portmapper Programportmapper-dump: The Portmapper Programportmapper-get-port: The Portmapper Programportmapper-null: The Portmapper Programportmapper-set: The Portmapper Programportmapper-unset: The Portmapper Programprocedure-call-information: Building an RPC Serverread-rpc-service-list: The Portmapper Programrpc-call-credentials: Building an RPC Serverrpc-call-error?: ONC RPC Message Typesrpc-call-procedure: Building an RPC Serverrpc-call-program: Building an RPC Serverrpc-call-verifier: Building an RPC Serverrpc-call-version: Building an RPC Serverrpc-call-xid: Building an RPC Serverrpc-error?: ONC RPC Message Typesrpc-garbage-arguments-error?: ONC RPC Message Typesrpc-language->scheme-client: Code Generation Compiler Back-Endrpc-language->scheme-server: Code Generation Compiler Back-Endrpc-language->sexp: Parserrpc-language->xdr-types: Run-Time Compiler Back-Endrpc-procedure-unavailable-error?: ONC RPC Message Typesrpc-program-mismatch-error?: ONC RPC Message Typesrpc-program-unavailable-error?: ONC RPC Message Typesrpc-record-marking-input-port: Record Marking Standardrpc-system-error?: ONC RPC Message Typesrun-input-event-loop: Building an RPC Serverrun-stream-rpc-server: Building an RPC Serversend-rpc-record: Record Marking Standardserve-one-stream-request: Building an RPC Serverserve-one-stream-request/asynchronous: Building an RPC Serversexp-location: Parserstream-connection-peer-address: Building an RPC Serverstream-connection-port: Building an RPC Serverstream-connection-rpc-program: Building an RPC Serverstream-connection?: Building an RPC Serverxdr-boolean: XDR Standard Data Typesxdr-decode: XDR Encoding and Decodingxdr-encode!: XDR Encoding and Decodingxdr-type-size: XDR Type Representationsxdr-union-arm-type: XDR Type Representations%void: XDR Standard Data Types&compiler-error: Parser*parser-options*: Parserrpc-message: ONC RPC Message Typesrpc-message-type: ONC RPC Message TypesSOCK_STREAM: Building an RPC Serverxdr-double: XDR Standard Data Typesxdr-float: XDR Standard Data Typesxdr-hyper-integer: XDR Standard Data Typesxdr-integer: XDR Standard Data Typesxdr-string: XDR Standard Data Typesxdr-unsigned-hyper-integer: XDR Standard Data Typesxdr-unsigned-integer: XDR Standard Data Typesxdr-variable-length-opaque-array: XDR Standard Data Typesxdr-void: XDR Standard Data Types[1] The source code repository is located at http://repo.or.cz/w/guile-r6rs-libs.git. Hopefully, this package will eventually be integrated into core Guile.
[2] Guile-Lib 0.1.6 can be used but will yield inaccurate error reporting from the compiler in some cases.
[3] Guile
1.8 provides an implementation of the former in the (srfi
srfi-34) module, while the latter is currently provided by the
guile-lib package.
[4] This idea was inspired by Oleg Kiselyov's description of thunked parent pointers in SXML, which may be found at http://okmij.org/ftp/Scheme/parent-pointers.txt.
[5] Finding useful applications leveraging the flexibility offered by the run-time compiler back-end is left as an exercise to the reader.