KevinWhalen / libboinc-client-py

The GUI_RPC API in Python, written by MestreLion, updated to Python 3 by djakej, tweaked for my uses.

libboinc-client-py boinc

Python API bindings for the XML RPC_GUI API that the BOINC core client exposes.

A separate packaging of the core functionality of MestreLion's BOINC Monitor. Extraction and Python 3 conversion helped along by drakej's fork.

Overview

Mostly copied from the original project's README.

The Problem

The XML RPC_GUI protocol also has a few drawbacks:

• The offical API library provided, gui_rpc_client, is C++.
• The command-line utility boinccmd, the other high-level interface to boinc client, is easy to use and well documented, but hard and not reliable to use its output to build a GUI manager/monitor on top of it, requiring complex string manipulation and many shell calls.

The Solution

• Provide the GUI_RPC API in a fully, easily reusable form. Actually, 2 APIs: one for low-level GUI_RPC, and another, higher level similar to boinccmd command-line options.
• Everything in Python, to lower the entry barrier and promote third party managers, monitors and GUIs to use a standard library.

The Approach

• gui_rpc_client.py is a re-write of gui_rpc_client.{h,cpp} in Python. Should provide the GUI_RPC API as faithfully as possible, in a Pythonic way, similar to what PyGTK/PyGI/PyGObject/gir bindings do with Gtk/GLib/etc libs. It starts as direct copy-and-paste of the C++ code as comments, and is progressively translated to Python code. C++ structs and enums are converted to classes, class RpcClient() being the port of struct RPC_CLIENT.
• client.py is a conversion of boinccmd, not only from C++ to Python, but also from a command-line utility to an API library. Uses gui_rpc_client.RpcClient calls to provide an interface that closely matches the command-line options of boinccmd, ported as methods of a BoincClient class.
• Since API and App Indicator are distinct, in the future they they can be packaged separately: API as a library package named python-boinc-gui-rpc or similar, installed somewhere in PYTHONPATH, while the app indicator monitor can be, for example boinc-monitor or boinc-indicator. Indicator depends on API and recommends boinc-manager, and API depends on boinc-client.

Using the API library

Package and modules names are not set in stone yet. Actually, API is still a non-working stub. But, assuming a boinc package in PYTHONPATH, it will be something like:

For the client API (emulating the options of boinccmd):

from boinc.client import BoincClient
bc = BoincClient()
status = bc.get_cc_status()

For the XML GUI_RPC API:

from boinc.gui_rpc_client import RpcClient
rpc = RpcClient()
rpc.init()
status = rpc.get_status()

The client API is higher-level and more straightforward than the GUI_RPC, since the client automatically deals with exchange_version(), read_gui_rpc_password() and authorize(). Until the client is expanded, GUI_RPC is more featureful.

Licenses and Copyright

• Copyright (C) 2013 Rodigo Silva (MestreLion) [e-mail].
• Copyright (C) 2020 drakej https://github.com/drakej.
• Copyright (C) 2022 Kevin Whalen (KevinWhalen) [e-mail].

License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.