[Zope] How a WebSite works using Zope?

[sean.upton@uniontrib.com]

I think you are on the right track in conceptualizing this; Zope does a very
good job in making it easier to break things up into easily digestible small
(generally) single-purpose components.  Everything is an object in Zope,
including granularly small single-purpose software components (like ZSQL
methods and the database adapter objects they use, or python scripts, page
templates, or user folders) that you place/arrange inside container objects
(folders).

You may want to strongly consider using Zope Page Templates (ZPT) instead of
DTML; they are documented well in the 2.5 (online) version of the Zope Book.
They keep code, generally speaking, out of the presentation, and even allow
you to have designers create mockup that gets stripped at runtime.  You'll
get much better editor possibilities if you use ZPT because it won't break
syntax highlighting in most text-based HTML editors, and will work with
WYSIWYG editors without breaking layout.

In your case, make your design, including some made-up mockup example data
in the templates using ZPT.  Write some scripts or ZSQL methods to get/set
relevant values from content stored in the ODB or RDBs respectively.  Then
write business-logic Python scripts that uses the data (or write to data)
and outputs something friendly for calling by a page template, like a
sequence/list or a string as a return value.  Once you have all of these
components in place, use TAL attributes inside the HTML in your ZPT pages to
call those middle-tier scripts.  This process will get you two things:

1 - the ability to modularize everything into tiers with differing concerns,
keeping application code, data-access code, and presentation code separate,
and potentially create a useful division of labor.

2 - You can storyboard your application visually in HTML before your code is
done (which is one of ZPT's main strengths).

Sean

-----Original Message-----
From: Raphael Ribeiro [mailto:raphaelribeiro@terra.com.br]
Sent: Saturday, May 18, 2002 1:32 PM
To: zope@zope.org
Subject: [Zope] How a WebSite works using Zope?


I don't know , then i'm asking this, but is it the way i'm thinking?

In your index and other pages you call your zope objects using DTML , it's
like that, you create an object in zope that takes some data of your SQL
Server DB, and then in your index page, you call that object that takes some
data? And then the DATA appears... 

Another question , is: Is there any DTML editor , and how can i separarate
the business logic and the front-end in ZOPE?

It's like, i want to make a design , and then i want to integrate it , with
my Zope website, and i don't want the codes to be a mass , how can i do it?