django-rpc 0.4

Installation

Install using pip:

pip install django-rpc

…or clone the project from github:

https://github.com/Alerion/django-rpct

1. Add djangorpc application to INSTALLED_APPS settings:

   INSTALLED_APPS = (
       ...
       'djangorpc',
   )

Now all required JS files are accessible via Django staticfiles application.

2. Add jQuery to your page. You can use one from application for quick start:

   <script src="{% static 'djangorpc/js/jquery-1.9.1.min.js' %}"></script>

3. In your base templates add required JS scripts:

   <script src="{% static 'djangorpc/js/jquery.util.js' %}"></script>
   <script src="{% static 'djangorpc/js/jquery.rpc.js' %}"></script>
   <script src="{% static 'djangorpc/js/jquery.form.js' %}"></script>

3. You can handle all errors in one place and show some message to user:

   //Show error message for RPC exceptions
   jQuery.Rpc.on('exception', function(event){
       alert('Error during RPC request: '+event.message);
   });

4. Do not forget about CSRF for Ajax requests.

Example

Let’s take a look at a quick example how to use Django RPC application.

We’ll create a page which calls server-side method using Django RPC and shows us alert with received message.

Create rpc.py in your project folder with following code:

from djangorpc import RpcRouter, Msg


class MainApiClass(object):

    def hello(self, username, user):
        return Msg(u'Hello, %s!' % username)

rpc_router = RpcRouter({
    'MainApi': MainApiClass(),
})

Add this to urls.py:

from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url
from rpc import rpc_router


urlpatterns = patterns('someproject.someapp.views',
    url(r'^rpc/', include(rpc_router.urls))
)

Add following code to page template:

<script src="{% url 'jsapi' %}"></script>
<script>
    MainApi.hello('username', function(resp, sb){
        alert(resp.msg);
    });
</script>

Reload page and you will see an alert with the message “Hello, username!”.

If you get an error 403, you may have forgotten about CSRF.

Here is an example of CSRF cookie injection:

<script>
    function getCookie(name) {
        var cookieValue = null;
        if (document.cookie && document.cookie != '') {
            var cookies = document.cookie.split(';');
            for (var i = 0; i < cookies.length; i++) {
                var cookie = jQuery.trim(cookies[i]);
                // Does this cookie string begin with the name we want?

                if (cookie.substring(0, name.length + 1) == (name + '=')) {
                    cookieValue = decodeURIComponent(cookie.substring(name.length + 1));
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
        return cookieValue;
    }

    $.ajaxSetup({
        beforeSend: function (xhr, settings) {
            if (!(/^http:.*/.test(settings.url) || /^https:.*/.test(settings.url))) {
                // Only send the token to relative URLs i.e. locally.
                xhr.setRequestHeader("X-CSRFToken", getCookie('csrftoken'));
            }
        },
        dataType: 'json',
        error:function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown){
            alert(textStatus +'\n'+ errorThrown)
        }
    });
</script>

The working project example you can find in our repo.

Contributing

Development for this software happend on github, and the main fork is currently at https://github.com/Alerion/Django-RPC

Contributions are welcome in any format, but using github’s pull request system is very highly preferred since it makes review and integration much easier.