Deployment and Developer Environment

Buildout

For: Best way to install and configure zope and plone

How:

Load Balancing: Pound + ZEO + Squid

For: high traffic sites. large numbers of simultaneous logins. processor intensive sites.

How:  Cross-Training for Your Plone Deployment

Reverse Proxy: cachefu + squid + buildout

For: Optimise cache settings for performance. Create a production environment.

How: plone.recipe.squid Cross-Training for Your Plone Deployment

Egg

For: To add new python modules into plone.

How: easy_install

Paster + Zopeskel

For: Quick boilderplate eggs for themes, buildouts etc

How: Readme

generic_setup profiles

For: To configure your plone instance when installing your egg

How:

Unit Testing

For: To test your code without starting zope

How:

PDB

For: Best practice when you need find out exactly how the your code, plone code or 3rd party code is running.

How: PDB and plone

 

 

Basics of understand Python, Zope, Zope3 and Plone

Python

For: pretty much everything

How: QuickRef BeginnersGuide Python List Comprehension. Python Lambda. Python decorators. Python dir(). Python help(). Debugging with PDB.

Interfaces

For: To attach behaviour

How:

configuration using zcml

For:

How:

Zope3 Adaptors

For: adapters mediate between abstract APIs and concrete objects

How: Five Tutorial: step 5  Slides

ZODB and pickling

For: Building utilities, content types or other kinds of persistance. Understanding differences to RDBMs architecture

How: ZODB/ZEO Programming Guide

portal_catalog

For: Creating custom searches of content. Indexing addition fields

How:

Zope Security

For: security checking, creating new permissions

How: Zope Book: Users and security

Object Publishing + Acquisition

For: Url traversal, request marshaling. How urls connect to your code

How: Object Traversal reference Martin on MVC in Zope/Plone

BrowserView Class

For: Where your controller code goes. In MVC terms, View = template (normally zpt), Controller is the BrowserView class, which gets linked to urls via zcml. So typical call would be: URL traversal -> BrowserView -> template -> BrowserView -> Model (AT class or sql or whatever).

Replaces: FormController (.cpy), python scripts, controller methods in AT classes, controller methods in templates.

How: Tutortial

 

Customisation

Zope Page Templates (ZPT)

For: Customize viewlets, forms, portlets

How: Reference

CSS

For: To theme a plone site

How: Elemental reference

PyPI and PSC

For: where to get add ons for plone

How:

plone.browserlayer

For: Lets views be specific just to the installed product

How:

archetypes.schemaextender

For: Add fields or metadata to existing content types

How:

Viewlets

For: Include html on every page. To customise certain areas of a plone page such as the page header.

How:

actions (and the actions tool)

For: Add links that appear on most pages

How: Use genericsetup profile

@@manage-viewlets + GS export + paster plone3_theme + skins + css

For: best current solution for a plone theming process. Skins should be used for js, css and images.

How:Tutorial  best practices for OOTB themeing

PloneFormGen

For: Create a dynamic Standalone Form . ie Fields can be changed TTW.

How:

Remember + Membrane

 For: Create users than can be managed using workflows, make it easy to customize the registration form, improve "searchability" of members

How:

Application/Add-on Development

Archetypes + paster create -t archetype

For: Creating new content type . Creating forms with values that persist like a database. 

How: archetypes quickref | archetypes using paster | Zopeskel contenttypes

HTML Forms + Argument Marshaling

For: Creating either a very simple or highly customised Standalone Form  

How: Object Publising reference

zc.formlib

For: Create a Standalone Form with auto generated widgets

How: Readme

Upcoming: z3c.form but not used enough yet

Zope3 Utilities + local utilities + componentregistry.xml

For: Holding singleton/global persistent data  o global methods. replaces portal_properties and plone tools.

How: martins book has the only decent local utility tuturial I can find.  mrtopf:zope3-utilities