## 18.24.8 Convenience Functions

`boolean`( | value)

  Convert any Python value to one of the XML-RPC Boolean constants, `True` or `False`.

`dumps`( | params[, methodname[, methodresponse[, encoding[, allow_none]]]])

  Convert params into an XML-RPC request. or into a response if methodresponse is true. params can be either a tuple of arguments or an instance of the `Fault` exception class. If methodresponse is true, only a single value can be returned, meaning that params must be of length 1. encoding, if supplied, is the encoding to use in the generated XML; the default is UTF-8. Python's `None` value cannot be used in standard XML-RPC; to allow using it via an extension, provide a true value for allow_none.

`loads`( | data[, use_datetime])

  Convert an XML-RPC request or response into Python objects, a `(params, methodname)`. params is a tuple of argument; methodname is a string, or `None` if no method name is present in the packet. If the XML-RPC packet represents a fault condition, this function will raise a `Fault` exception. The use_datetime flag can be used to cause date/time values to be presented as ``datetime`.datetime` objects; this is false by default. Note that even if you call an XML-RPC method with ``datetime`.date` or ``datetime`.time` objects, they are converted to `DateTime` objects internally, so only ``datetime`.datetime` objects will be returned.

  Changed in version 2.5: The use_datetime flag was added.