[Zope3-Users] New User: Zope 2, or Zope 3?

[Gary Poster]

On Feb 8, 2006, at 6:05 PM, Chris Cogdon wrote:

> Hi folks! I'm starting work on a from-scratch web application, and  
> I'd like to use this as a first-time-application using Zope.
>
> (Actually, this is not really the first time... but my previous was  
> something really simple way back in the Zope 1 days, so... just  
> pretend this is first-time).
>
> I'm trying to get started quickly (of course), and want to do it  
> reading as much documentation as possible, without depending on you  
> fine folk too much for help. From my research it seems that there's  
> a bunch of documentation and tutorials geared around Zope 2, but  
> not anywhere near as much for Zope 3, and Zope 3 seems a vastly  
> different beast than '2'.

Yes, it is.

> So, my question is... should I stick with Zope 2 for the moment  
> (with its plethora of documentation), or dive right into Zope 3 and  
> battle it out (and depend more on the community for any lack of  
> documentation)? In particular, I DO want a decent tutorial to work  
> through to get me started (and I cant find one of any depth at all  
> for Zope 3).

Jim's tutorial is a very good start.  Philipp's book is a bit out of  
date but still generally very valuable and would probably be your  
next stop.  Stephan's book is usually recommended for working after  
Philipp.

> Or... can I use the Zope 2 tutorials to work through Zope 3 ??

Nope.  They share the ZODB, and basic object publishing concepts.   
Recently, Zope 2 has begun integrating Zope 3 technologies, but it's  
still more like Zope 3 knowledge can be back-ported to parts of Zope  
2, but not vice versa, much.

> My background: I'm a seasoned python developer, and have written my  
> own web-frameworks for various applications.

Sounds like you are a Zope 3 candidate then.  If you want through-the- 
web development, Zope 2 is what you want (ATM, at least); if you want  
more standard python development, Zope 3 is what you want.

> This time I want to use something more 'mainstream' so other  
> developers on the project have something 'familiar' to work with,  
> or at least something that will be useful to learn. The application  
> will need to connect to a PostgreSQL database, and would like some  
> simple authentication plugins so end-users of the application can  
> create accounts, log in, and have data restricted based on logins.  
> Nothing much more fancy than that.

Sounds like a good Zope 3 app.  The authentication stuff should be  
custom plugins for zope.app.authentication.  I don't remember where  
the DBA for PostgreSQL is, but it's in the svn.zope.com repository  
someplace (and others can point it out).

Gary