people who want to create new remote servers.

The `Python remote server`__ can be used as a reference implementation.

__ https://github.com/robotframework/PythonRemoteServer

There are two possibilities how remote servers can provide information about

the keywords they contain. They are briefly explained below and documented

more thoroughly in the subsequent sections.

1. Remote servers can implement the same methods as the `dynamic library API`_

has. This means `get_keyword_names` method and optional `get_keyword_arguments`,

`get_keyword_types`, `get_keyword_tags` and `get_keyword_documentation` methods.

Notice that using "camel-case names" like `getKeywordNames` is not

possible similarly as in the normal dynamic API.

2. Starting from Robot Framework 4.0, remote servers can have a single

`get_library_information` method that returns all library and keyword

information as a single dictionary. If a remote server has this method,

the other getter methods like `get_keyword_names` are not used at all.

This approach has the benefit that there is only one XML-RPC call to get

information while the approach explained above requires several calls per

keyword. With bigger libraries the difference can be significant.

Regardless how remote servers provide information about their keywords, they

must have `run_keyword` method that is used when keywords are executed.

How the actual keywords are implemented is not relevant for the Remote

Using `get_keyword_names` and keyword specific getters

This section explains how the Remote library gets keyword names and other

information when the server implements `get_keyword_names`. The next sections

covers using the newer `get_library_info` method.

The `get_keyword_names` method must return names of the keyword the server

contains as a list of strings. Remote servers can, and should, also implement

`get_keyword_arguments`, `get_keyword_types`, `get_keyword_tags` and

`get_keyword_documentation` methods to provide more information about

the keywords. All these methods take the name of the keyword as an argument

and what they must return is explained in the table below.

.. table:: Keyword specific getter methods

:class: tabular

Method Return value

`get_keyword_arguments` Arguments as a list of strings in the `same format as with dynamic libraries`__.

`get_keyword_types` Type information as a list or dictionary of strings. See below for details.

`get_keyword_documentation` Documentation as a string.

`get_keyword_tags` Tags as a list of strings.

Additionally `None` or `null` values may not be allowed by the XML-RPC server,

but an empty string can be used to indicate that certain argument does not

have type information instead.

be used when generating documentation with the Libdoc_ tool. This information

is got by calling `get_keyword_documentation` with special values `__intro__`

and `__init__`.

Using `get_library_information`

The `get_library_information` method allows returning information about the whole

library in one XML-RPC call. The information must be returned as a dictionary where

keys are keyword names and values are nested dictionaries containing keyword information.

The dictionary can also contain separate entries for generic library information.

The keyword information dictionary can contain keyword arguments, documentation,

tags and types, and the respective keys are `args`, `doc`, `tags` and `types`.

Information must be provided using same semantics as when `get_keyword_arguments`,

`get_keyword_documentation`, `get_keyword_tags` and `get_keyword_types` discussed

in the previous section. If some information is not available, it can be omitted

from the info dictionary altogether.

`get_library_information` supports also returning general library documentation

to be used with Libdoc_. It is done by including special `__intro__` and `__init__`

entries into the returned library information dictionary.

For example, a Python library like

.. sourcecode:: python

"""Library documentation."""

from robot.api.deco import keyword

@keyword(tags=['x', 'y'])

def example(a: int, b=True):

"""Keyword documentation."""

pass

def another():

pass

could be mapped into this kind of library information dictionary::

.. note:: `get_library_information` is new in Robot Framework 4.0.