[Zope-Annce] [ANN] 'Reference': a somewhat safer 'Symlink' (symbolic link)

Dieter Maurer dieter@handshake.de
Fri, 23 Aug 2002 23:22:41 +0200


Sometimes, you want to refer from one place in the Zope Web site
hierarchy to an object in another place. The reference should behave
almost as the refered to object. I.e., you want something like a
symbolic link in Unix.

Shane's Symlink product allows you to do this. However, Symlinks are
too good in behaving like the refered to object. Link and original are
almost not distinguishable. Therefore, it is very easy to modify the
link and accidentally change the original, too. That's why I consider
Symlink a bit unsafe and recommend to use it only under very
restrictive circumstances.

References is very similar to Symlink. However, a Reference has its
own id, title, icon and management facilities. Therefore, it can be
quite easily distinguished from the target. I consider it
safer. However, there are still some security weaknesses.

See the README file in the distribution, for details.

Download: <http://www.dieter.handshake.de/pyprojects/zope>


Dieter