diff --git a/Lib/xmlrpc/server.py b/Lib/xmlrpc/server.py
index 849bfdd..a6275a1 100644
--- a/Lib/xmlrpc/server.py
+++ b/Lib/xmlrpc/server.py
@@ -106,6 +106,7 @@
 
 from xmlrpc.client import Fault, dumps, loads, gzip_encode, gzip_decode
 from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler
+from functools import partial
 import http.server
 import socketserver
 import sys
@@ -204,17 +205,22 @@
         self.instance = instance
         self.allow_dotted_names = allow_dotted_names
 
-    def register_function(self, function, name=None):
+    def register_function(self, function=None, name=None):
         """Registers a function to respond to XML-RPC requests.
 
         The optional name argument can be used to set a Unicode name
         for the function.
         """
+        # decorator factory
+        if function is None:
+            return partial(self.register_function, name=name)
 
         if name is None:
             name = function.__name__
         self.funcs[name] = function
 
+        return function
+
     def register_introspection_functions(self):
         """Registers the XML-RPC introspection methods in the system
         namespace.