Auto proxy?

[John Tobey]

Folks,

Thanks for the excellent implementation!  Please tell me if what I
have in mind has already been done or is too stupid to even
contemplate. :-)

I have written a few XML-RPC methods and can call them via WebServer.
I started writing JUnit tests for my methods and soon found myself
writing a client stub for each method.  It occurred to me that the
stubs might be useful in contexts other than just testing.  I realized
that the stub generation might be automated with a little
java.lang.reflect code yet to be written, assuming that I group my
method signatures in a Java interface.

Something like:

    interface Foo { ... }      // XML-RPC method signatures
    XmlRpcClient client = ...;
    Foo proxy = (Foo) AutoProxy.create (Foo.class, client, "foo");
    proxy.meth(arg);           // Call "foo.meth" remotely!

    ////////////////////////////////////////
    /// The code yet to be written.  JDK 1.3 required. :-(
    ////////////////////////////////////////
    package org.apache.xmlrpc;

    public class AutoProxy implements InvocationHandler {
        /**
         * java.lang.reflect.InvocationHandler implementation
         */
        public Object invoke (Object proxy, Method meth, Object[] args)
            throws XmlRpcException, IOException
        {
            ...  // translate meth/args into an XML-RPC call
        }

        /**
         * Create a proxy for the given methods (iFace) in the given
         * namespace (prefix).
         */
        public static Object create (Class iFace,
                                     XmlRpcHandler client,
                                     String prefix)
        {
            AutoProxy handler = new AutoProxy (iFace, client, prefix);
            return Proxy.newInstance (iFace.getClassLoader(),
                                      new Class[] { iFace },
                                      handler);
        }
        ...
    }

I am thinking this might be a good opportunity to get my feet wet in
the Java reflection API.  What do you all think?

Best regards,
-John