How to backup database using XMLRPC?

Question

I'm trying to backup my database using the following script:

import xmlrpclib

sock = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http://localhost:8069/xmlrpc/db')
backup_file = open('backup.dump', 'wb') # Same extension used by Odoo
backup_file.write(sock.dump('mypassword', 'mydb'))
backup_file.close()

At this point the content of the file is something like this:
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...
...

When backing up through the Odoo Database Management I get a zipped file which is what I'm trying to achieve. For example test_2014-11-12_16-06-35Z.dump:

Is there a way to "reconstruct" all those bytes to a valid Odoo backup file? I tried with StringIO and ByteIO with no success. Any help will be much appreciated.

---

Solution

Thanks to @André I finally have a solution:

import base64
import xmlrpclib

sock = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http://localhost:8069/xmlrpc/db')
backup_file = open('backup.dump', 'wb') 
backup_file.write(base64.b64decode(sock.dump('mypassword', 'mydb')))
backup_file.close()

Answer 1

The dump() function encodes the file in Base64 before returning it. You can decode it with the base64 command:

base64 -d [dump file] > [decoded file]