Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook

Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook

Overview of this book

The Plone Content Management System is one of the best open source CMS, because by using Plone's development framework you can extend its functionality according to the specific requirements of your website. The Plone framework has lots of components that can be used to create add-ons or extensions called Plone Products. You can optimize your site for improved usability, accessibility, and security by creating custom Plone products.This book covers recipes that will help you create custom Plone Products and implement them on your website. Every topic covered in this book is accompanied by essential fundamentals and step-by-step explanation that will help you understand it better. With the help of this book you will be able to create custom Plone products that are well suited for your website.You can read the whole book or just pick recipes relevant for you; cross references help you understand the recipes even if you do not read them in order.If you work through the book in order, you will start by setting up an example project of a news website that will be developed throughout the book. You will learn about all of the necessary tools a Plone developer must have before starting any project. You will develop the website further by detecting problems and debugging them. You will be able to modify code on-the-fly or get help on how to do some tasks by installing and using special tools such as IPython, ipdb, and PDBDebugMode. You will then create a new content type, based on an existing one, and wrap the final product into a Python egg.You will set up automated testing to prevent errors in code that have evolved in the development stage. You will use paster to automatically create a new custom content type from scratch. You will improve the performance of your application by creating lightweight content types and following other recipes covered in this book. Key features such as usability, internationalization, accessibility and security are covered to make sure that your development and customizations will be at the level of Plone core and its most remarkable add-on products.You will improve your user interface by creating simple client-side visual changes and server-side manipulation of objects. You will learn to create and manage portlets by using Portlet manager and customize your website by modifying third-party products. Finally you will learn to communicate with an external non-Python-based system and make your products available for future use.

Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

Preface

Free Chapter

Getting Started

Introduction

Installing Python on Linux

Installing Plone on Linux

Installing Plone on Windows

Checking out code from a version controlsystem

Creating a Plone site

Using Development Tools

Introduction

Accessing an IPython powered shell

Taking advantage of an enhanced interactive Python debugger with ipdb

Discovering Zope/Plone APIs and docstrings with DocFinderTab

Opening an online Python shell on Plone using Clouseau

Debugging Zope exceptions with PDBDebug Mode

Applying code changes on-the-fly using plone.reload

Creating Content Types with ArchGenXML

Introduction

Installing ArchGenXML

Configuring ArgoUML

Creating a model

Generating code

Customizing generated code

Installing the product

Automatically installing products in your Zope instance

Prevent Bugs through Testing

Introduction

Working with paster-generated test suites

Creating a test suite with ArchGenXML

Creating doctests with iPython

Zope functional testing

Using Selenium functional tests

Creating a Custom Content Type with Paster

Introduction

Creating an Archetypes product with paster

Adding a content type into a product

Changing the base class in paster content types

Adding fields to a content type

Adding a custom validator to a content type

Modifying the view of a content type with jQuery

Creating Lightweight Content Types

Introduction

Creating a product package structure

Creating a folderish content type

Creating the user interface for Zope 3 content types

Creating content types with Dexterity

Improving Product Performance

Introduction

Installing CacheFu with a policy product

Improving performance by tweaking expensive code

Testing server load and benchmarking our code

Internationalization

Introduction

Adding i18ndude support to ArchGenXML

Installing i18ndude standalone

Using i18ndude

Using Placeless Translation Services for i18n support

Using zope.i18n approach

Overriding others' translations

Using i18n with ArchGenXML

Using i18n with paster-created products

Adding i18n support to any product

Translating content

Setting language options

Adding Security to your Products

Introduction

Creating a new permission

Adding a new role

Adding user groups

Testing security customizations

Protecting operations with permissions

Managing security with workflows

Adding configuration options in Plone control panel

Improving User Interface with KSS

Introduction

Preparing a form to take full advantage of KSS

Changing end user pages with client-side KSS

Submitting data via AJAX

Creating Portlets

Introduction

Creating a portlet package

Customizing a new portlet according to our requirements

Testing portlets

Assigning portlets automatically

Extending Third-Party Products

Introduction

Using skin layers

Overriding Zope 3 components

Customizing Zope 3 browser templates and files

Subscribing to others' events

Using the ZCA to extend a third-party product: Collage

Interacting with other Systems: XML-RPC

Introduction

Creating a configuration form

Registering a local utility

Registering a global utility

Getting our Products ready for Production

Introduction

Installing and configuring an egg repository

Submitting products to an egg repository

Writing a production buildout

Creating a Policy Product

Creating a policy product

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

About the Authors

Juan Pablo Giménez's programming career started in 1996. He was a C/C++ programmer in real-time systems under the QNX OS, but quickly the philosophy of Linux and free software became more and more interesting for him as he became a sysadmin and a PHP programmer. In 2000 he began his own company, Rcom, through which he has provided IT services using FOSS tools to cover a wide range of languages and technologies. Despite having gone through abundant experience with other languages and CMS frameworks, today he focuses totally on developing products and sites under Plone.

I want to thank my family, my parents, my sister, and especially my grandmother Chola, for years of support and understanding while I sojourned in the-for them-incomprehensible world of programming.

Thanks to my best friends and associates in Rcom, Juan Pablo Noriega, Roman Mottino, Eugenio Oliveri, and Leandro Viani.

Thanks to Emanuel Sartor and the Plone community for always being there to help me in my learning process.

And thanks, Laura, for putting up with me and my crazy passions; without you, it would not have been possible for me to reach this far; thank you also for bringing to life Julieta and Sofia, the joy of my days.

Marcos F. Romero has been a software developer since 1997, working with Lotus Notes, both to develop applications, and as a trainer of users and other developers.

In 1999, he launched his first web site, after which he specialized in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and DOM among other technologies.

Since then he has taken part in numerous other web sites and webapps—including a Lotus Notes CMS—and started working as a consultant to other professionals.

In 2007, he started to participate in Plone projects and became fascinated by the Open Source world.

For over 10 years he has been interested in Usability as a discipline applicable to everyday activities and, focused on the customer's and end user's needs, he aims to simplify and help their everyday tasks. Today he actively applies this concept in Inter-Cultura, a company that specializes in Usability and User Experience, where he has been working for several years.

All my appreciation to Gonzalo J. Auza, who ushered me into the world of Plone and who has supported me all along. A big thanks to Juan Pablo Giménez, who can't but continue to teach me; and to Martin Aspeli, Alec Mitchell, and Emanuel Sartor, who kindly agreed to share their knowledge by reviewing this book.

My gratitude to Rebeca Resnik, my English teacher, who has a lot to do with this endeavour.

A special thanks to my family and friends—especially to my parents—who phoned me continually for updates on my progress towards completion of this book.

But most of all, thanks to my wife, who lovingly did more than her share with our kids, buying me the time and quiet to complete this book.

Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook

Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook

Overview of this book

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Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook

About the Authors