[Zope3-dev] Re: Boring product for Zope 3

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Hi Morten,

thanks for this "boring product".

> I'd like to announce the first boring product for Zope 3, a
> simple product meant to illustrate how 'packages' can be
> developed in Zope 3:
> 
>  http://www.nidelven-it.no/products/zope3_boring/
> 
> Comments and feedback are as always appreciated :)

I have a few comments indeed:

1. We are trying to discourage the term "product" the way it was used in 
Zope2. In Zope2, there was a clear understanding of what a "product" is 
-- something that lives in the Products directory. Zope3 doesn't have 
such a directory anymore; Zope3 works with any python packages, whether 
they are Zope specific or not. So, maybe you'd like to rename your 
"boring product" to "boring package", "boring application", "boring 
add-on" or whatever suits you.

2. You seem to be writing a content class that can be added to normal 
content space. For content interface, we typically use schema fields to 
describe their data, not so much methods, e.g.:

   from zope.interface import Interface
   from zope.schema import TextLine

   class IBoring(Interface):

       title = TextLine(
           title=u"Title",
           description=u"Boring title",
           required=True
           )

With this, Zope can then automatically render add/edit forms (using the 
browser:addform / browser:editform directives) for you. Using this 
simplified way of writing content types should probably be more 
attractive to beginners than implementing multiple interfaces and methods.

Also, you might want to declare that IBoring is a content type 
interface, i.e. that it describes a content type, not some other type of 
object. You do that in ZCML with:

  <interface
       interface=".interfaces.IBoring"
       type="zope.app.content.interfaces.IContentType"
       />

3. It would cool if you could adhere to some of the Zope3 coding styles. 
We usually write classes in CamelCase, thus I would name the boring 
class Boring and the edit view BoringEditView.

4. If you have a 'browser' package, then the 'boring_edit_view' class 
(or 'BoringEditView' rather), the boring.png icon and all browser:* ZCML 
directives should also move to that package. Otherwise it doesn't make 
sense to have it in the first place.


Note that there's an extensive tutorial written by Jim Fulton that 
introduces a 'boring' content type (a "Contact"). In 9 steps of the 
tutorial, you learn everything from writing an interface to writing 
browser views with ZPT for a class. You might want to look at that. I'm 
not sure if it's in subversion yet, so I just point you to the CVS resource:

http://cvs.zope.org/Docs/ZopeComponentArchitecture/PythonProgrammerTutorial/Chapter1/

Philipp