[Zope3-dev] Re: proposed changes to contained helper functions

[Shane Hathaway]

Philipp von Weitershausen wrote:
> Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote:
> 
>> Garrett Smith writes:
>>  > It seems your application is a bit different from a typical 
>> __setitem__  > scenario, where the child is named.
>>
>> That depends on whether you're thinking of sequence __setitem__ or
>> mapping __setitem__.  ;-(  The DOM is mostly about sequences of
>> children; the children have indexes, but not names.  The indexes are
>> not specific to the node being referenced, but change as nodes are
>> added and removed before the child in the parent.  (Think of an
>> element node as a list of children.)
> 
> 
> Correct. Basically, I would like to express parenthood without having to 
> make any assumptions on a) how the parent names its child (if it names 
> it at all) nor b) how it stores a reference to it (if it stores one at 
> all).

Giving a unique name to each child serves the purpose of making all 
children potentially addressable via URL.  That's one of the sweet spots 
of Zope; it makes the system discoverable and clear.  I think a decision 
to not use this pattern should be weighed carefully.  In particular, if 
an object is not addressable via URL, it is quite difficult to provide a 
Web user interface for it or any of its descendants.

Shane