device_rpc method is broken in 1.5.0

[v1shnya]

I have a container setup with the latest versions of cligen, clixon, clixon-controller, and clixon-pyapi.

When sending an RPC to a device following the instructions in https://clixon-controller-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cli.html#send-the-rpc, I get an error 'Template not found' when calling cx.device_rpc("*", "stats", {"MODULES": "true"})

(Pdb) l
396
397  	        send(self.__socket, rpc, pp)
398
399  	        data = read(self.__socket, pp, standalone=self.__standalone)
400
401  ->	        if "<ok/>" not in data:
402  	            raise ValueError("Apply template failed")
403
404  	        return True
405
406  	    def apply_template(self, devname: str, template: str, variables: dict) -> None:
(Pdb) p data
'<rpc-reply xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"><rpc-error><error-type>application</error-type><error-tag>operation-failed</error-tag><error-severity>error</error-severity><error-message>Template not found</error-message></rpc-error></rpc-reply>'

If I downgrade clixon-pyapi to version 1.4.0, the device_rpc call works as expected.

[krihal]

Thanks for finding this, I pushed a fix. Can you please verify it?

[v1shnya]

Hi Kristofer, good day!

It works, but not exactly as I would expect. I believe that func description and the return type of def device_rpc(self, devname: str, template: str, variables: dict) -> None should be fixed.

Trying to reproduce documentation case

root@controller:/clixon# python3
Python 3.11.2 (main, Apr 28 2025, 14:11:48) [GCC 12.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from clixon.clixon import Clixon
>>> cx = Clixon()
>>> res = cx.device_rpc("*", "stats", {"MODULES": "true"})
>>> print(res.dumps())
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'dumps'
>>> res
[devdata, devdata]
>>> res.
res.append(    res.clear()    res.copy()     res.count(     res.extend(    res.index(     res.insert(    res.pop(       res.remove(    res.reverse()  res.sort(
>>> res[1].dumps()
'<name>prod-dev2</name><data><global xmlns="http://clicon.org/lib"><xmlnr>5810</xmlnr><yangnr>57536</yangnr></global><datastores xmlns="http://clicon.org/lib"><datastore><name>running</name><nr>1050</nr><size>141794</size></datastore><datastore><name>candidate</name><nr>1050</nr><size>149509</size></datastore><datastore>....
>>> res[0].dumps()
'<name>dev1</name><data><global xmlns="http://clicon.org/lib"><xmlnr>5883</xmlnr><yangnr>54928</yangnr></global><datastores xmlns="http://clicon.org/lib"><datastore><name>running</name><nr>313</nr><size>44588</size></datastore><datastore><name>candidate</name><nr>320</nr><size>51286</size></datastore>...

[krihal]

The return type can be either a list or an Element object depending on whether you get data from one or more devices. In the documentation example we use "*" which potentially returns a list with data from several devices - I updated both the documentation and the type hint of device_rpc.

[v1shnya]

Perfect, thank you!