xmlrpc problem

I'm a newbie to python and I'm trying to implement a small xml-rpc server client pair. I've downloaded some sample code off of the net which works fine on its own, however when I put parts of it into my existing code, it gives me an error which I can't seem to figure out.....This is what it spits back at me

Unhandled exception in thread started by <function serveClient at 0x008FA330>
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Program Files\Trust2\python\hearingAid.py", line 71, in serveClient
if mod.execute(params,cursor,conn):
File "C:\Program Files\Trust2\python\filesharing\query.py", line 87, in execute
print server.dump_params(params)
File "C:\PYTHON23\lib\xmlrpclib.py", line 1029, in __call__
return self.__send(self.__name, args)
File "C:\PYTHON23\lib\xmlrpclib.py", line 1316, in __request
verbose=self.__verbose
File "C:\PYTHON23\lib\xmlrpclib.py", line 1080, in request
return self._parse_response(h.getfile(), sock)
File "C:\PYTHON23\lib\xmlrpclib.py", line 1219, in _parse_response
return u.close()
File "C:\PYTHON23\lib\xmlrpclib.py", line 742, in close
raise Fault(**self._stack[0])
xmlrpclib.Fault: <Fault 1: "exceptions.AttributeError:'dict' object has no attribute 'encode'">

if anyone has any suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Ok, I fixed it.....I know what I did to fix it, but I don't know why it fixed it. If anyone knows why this would have fixed it, please let me know.....

Here's what I did:

originally my MyRequestHandler class only had two methods in it, call and dump_params. This is when I was getting the error.

When I copied the other methods that I found in an online example (which included dump_methodcall, test, and dump_response) it started working.....

It would seem to me that what I was trying to do before was dependent on one of these new methods, but I can't see how or why.