rpc

Overview ¶

Package rpc provides access to the exported methods of an object across a network or other I/O connection. A server registers an object, making it visible as a service with the name of the type of the object. After registration, exported methods of the object will be accessible remotely. A server may register multiple objects (services) of different types but it is an error to register multiple objects of the same type.

Only methods that satisfy these criteria will be made available for remote access; other methods will be ignored:

• the method is exported.
• the method has two arguments, both exported (or builtin) types.
• the method's second argument is a pointer.
• the method has return type error.

In effect, the method must look schematically like

func (t *T) MethodName(argType T1, replyType *T2) error

where T, T1 and T2 can be marshaled by encoding/gob. These requirements apply even if a different codec is used. (In the future, these requirements may soften for custom codecs.)

The method's first argument represents the arguments provided by the caller; the second argument represents the result parameters to be returned to the caller. The method's return value, if non-nil, is passed back as a string that the client sees as if created by errors.New. If an error is returned, the reply parameter will not be sent back to the client.

Here is a simple example. A server wishes to export an object of type Arith:

package server

type Args struct {
	A, B int
}

type Quotient struct {
	Quo, Rem int
}

type Arith int

func (t *Arith) Multiply(args *Args, reply *int) error {
	*reply = args.A * args.B
	return nil
}

func (t *Arith) Divide(args *Args, quo *Quotient) error {
	if args.B == 0 {
		return errors.New("divide by zero")
	}
	quo.Quo = args.A / args.B
	quo.Rem = args.A % args.B
	return nil
}

The server calls:

arith := new(Arith)
rpc.Register(arith)