November 1999 - Zope

Converting To Linux From Windows?
by Milt 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

>From a Zope beginner: 1. I installed and learned (still learning...) Zope on Win 95 platform 2. I recently installed Zope on Red Hat 6.1 (still linux newbie) 3. How do I move or port existing Zope objects (folders, methods etc.) from the Win 95 to the Linux box? TIA

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ZOPE VS. PHP, VIGNETTE ETC.
by Ben White 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

Hi, I am new to Zope -- really excited about it -- but have a few basic questions (which I'm sure have been asked before). 1. HOW WELL DOES ZOPE SCALE? Is anybody out there using this for high traffic sites? We have been using a custom blend of PHP and Mysql for a busy site and it works pretty well (although MySQL seems to choke when we get really slammed). How well does Zope scale? 2. HOW FAST IS ZOPE? VS PHP? And how does it compare to the PHP/MySQL combo? Are their any benchmarks available? It seems pretty quick but I'm not sure what type of transactions are going on below the surface of the pages I'm looking at. 3. HOW WELL DOES ZOPE WORK WITH MYSQL? We have built some pretty serious backend with PHP and MySQL and I'd love to be able to keep our database structure etc. 4. HAS ANYBODY COMPARED ZOPE WITH VIGNETTE? Some of our big clients have considered using Vignette. Seems Zope has largely the same mission -- albeit with a lot of catch up to do. Has anybody made a similiar comparison -- and if so do you have any info or ideas to share? 4. MIGRATING What is the best way to migrate from a traditional web structure to Zope? For instance do you have to rebuild and register all of your objects with Zope through the web interface? Or can you upload files and have them be recognized by Zope? Thanks for the help Ben ..::..::..:..:.:..::..::.::..:.:..:..::.:::...::.: PLATFORM NETWORK http://www.platform.net v 718.387.5164 .::. f 718.387.5204 :.:..:.:..::.::..:....::..::.::..:.:..::..::.::.:. This e-mail document contains confidential and proprietary information of Platform Network Corp. Do not copy, reproduce in any medium, or disclose without the prior permission of Platform Network Corp.

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cut / paste support
by Eugene Saltykov 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

Hi What parent object should I include in ZClass to make it Cut/Paste - able?

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Re: [Zope] Converting To Linux From Windows?
by Jeff Rush 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

It is not possible to accurately move a Zope site from one host to another using only FTP. Zope's FTP interface does not convey all properties/metadata of objects. It will pick up the bulk text content of DTML Documents and put them onto the new site, but little else. FTP -is- a pretty good way to migrate a non-Zope site, where the files come across as DTML Documents, and then you can edit/embellish them with Zopeisms. But then, if you have access to the files of the old site, the best way is load_site.py. It would seem the absolute best way, would be via some kind of WebDAV-based mirroring tool, about which I've heard no mention. I know little about WebDAV but it would seem to most accurately convey Zope's metadata btw sites. Has anyone started working on this? On Mon, 22 Nov 1999 00:23:25 +0100 (CET), Alexander Limi wrote: >On Sun, 21 Nov 1999, Milt wrote: > >As a beginner, I don't know if this will work, but you can access Zope as >an FTP site on port 8021, and find the objects in the DB as files. > >Maybe that property is of any use? I haven't tried this myself, but >feedback on whether it is possible to move the contents of the DB or not >this way would be most welcome. __________________________________________________ Jeff Rush <jrush(a)taupro.com> Tau Productions Inc. Linux/Python/Zope Consultant http://www.taupro.com

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Re: [Zope] Arg! How format a link from a DB?
by Anthony Baxter 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

>>> Bradley McLean wrote > I've got a bunch of data in some sql tables. I'd > like to be able to define a DTML Method that formats > up a link tag based on an incoming record id. > > I then want to include this method in another one. > ----- Calling dtml method: > <dtml-var "buildHotlinkFor(ID=5)"> You need to pass REQUEST and the namespace through Try <dtml-var "buildHotlinkFor(REQUEST, _, ID=5)"> Anthony

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Arg! How format a link from a DB?
by Bradley McLean 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

I've been butting my head against what must be a simple problem: I've got a bunch of data in some sql tables. I'd like to be able to define a DTML Method that formats up a link tag based on an incoming record id. I then want to include this method in another one. So: ----- Calling dtml method: <dtml-var "buildHotlinkFor(ID=5)"> ----- buildHotlinkFor dtml method: <dtml-in "AnotherFolder.lookupSQLMethod(ID)"> <a href="displayRecord?ID=<dtml-var expr=ID>"> <dtml-var fieldInTheRecord></a> </dtml-in> ----- (SQL method omitted, but proven to work). I'm clearly missing some subtleties in how to pass / call. I can get the buildHotLinkFor dtml Method to work just fine if I enter a test URL to it, but when I try to call it from another method in another folder, I can't seem to make it happy. It will refuse to find the SQL method, or if I monkey around with various other parameters (like passing REQUEST, or AnotherFolder to it), it gets closer to working. Help! TIA -Brad

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Anonymous User authentication problem ...
by Darran Edmundson 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

If I put the following DTML method in my root folder: <dtml-with subfolder> user: <dtml-var "AUTHENTICATED_USER.getUserName()"><br> can view: <dtml-var "AUTHENTICATED_USER.has_permission('View',_.getitem('id',1))"><br> </dtml-with> and call it (from the server root) without logging in, I get user: Anonymous User can view: 0 even though the root folder says that Anonymous can View. As expected, this DTML snippet returns "can view: 1" if I actually login. Do I need to create a user folder in my root and manually add the Anonymous user? As always, any help is much appreciated. Cheers, Darran. -- Darran Edmundson [Darran.Edmundson(a)anu.edu.au]

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help with apache-fastcgi and zserver
by Anthony Baxter 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

Does anyone out there have a simple example of an apache config for using mod_fastcgi to connect to a ZServer on a remote machine? The docs aren't at all clear to me... (and the Zope Admin Guide bit isn't written... :( Thanks, Anthony

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announce: SQLSession, 0.2.0
by Anthony Baxter 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

At <URL:http://www.zope.org/Members/anthony/software/SQLSession/>, you can find version 0.2.0 of my SQL Session product. Attached to this email is a list of changes since the previously publically released version, as well as the readme.txt from the distribution. Note that this version should behave in a much more pleasant fashion with databases which dislike embedded newlines in literal strings (e.g. Gadfly, and maybe PostgreSQL). Thanks to amk for pointing out the missing dictionary bits (and supplying a patch!) Let me know if this is useful for you, and if you have suggestions for it's future development (patches more than welcome, of course :) Anthony --- Version 0.2.0 Check that _force_new_session exists and has a true value, not just that it exists. Creating a new session updates the current REQUEST to refer to the new session. Otherwise, any old session will be seen for the rest of this transaction. This is a Principle of Least Suprise fix. Added additional dictionary methods (from amk). All except copy() are implemented. Added caching (disabled by default). Added support for multiple modes of storage in the database. Currently there is base64 and base64oneline. The latter replaces newlines in the encoded string with spaces. This is needed for gadfly, and _may_ be needed for PostgreSQL. If you need to enable this for your database, drop me a line and let me know which databases require it and which don't. --- README for SQL Session, v 0.2 SQL Session This is a server-side session object that stores all state in an SQL database. Usage: create an SQL Session object (it will be called 'Session'), and make sure the SQL is correct. in all documents that want to use Sessions, put, at the top <dtml-call Session> (I'd suggest putting it in your standard_html_header) This does a few things: It looks for a session cookie (by default called _ZSession, but that's something you can just set). If it finds one, it looks in the database to check that this is an ok cookie to use. If it doesn't find a cookie, or it finds that the Session is a dud, or if the request has the parameter '_force_new_session' set to a true value, it will create a new Session in the DB, then send back a cookie with that session in it. Next, it creates a SessionObj called 'SESSION', and puts it in the REQUEST object (so REQUEST['SESSION'] - just like REQUEST['RESPONSE']). This looks and acts like a dictionary, only it pulls its data out of the DB, and sets data in the DB. It supports the following: __getitem__, __setitem__, set, keys, values, items, and most other dictionary methods (except copy) From here on inside the document, you can do things like <dtml-call "SESSION.set('someitem', 'somevalue')"> <dtml-var "SESSION['someitem']"> and it will just be squirrelled away in the DB. The Gory Details, #1: SQL schema: The default SQL schema is pretty dumb, but it should work on everything (I test on gadfly). create table sessions ( session varchar ) create unique index sessions_idx on sessions(session) create table session_data ( session varchar, name varchar, value varchar ) A smarter one (like the one I use :) would use a sequence or similar to create a session_id, and use that in a key in session_data. Anyway, you don't have to use this schema - go edit the sql methods in the session (pull up it's management interface). The Gory Details, #2: Storing objects: Right now the SessionObj stores base64 encoded pickles. It can optionally do caching of results, but only for the lifetime of the REQUEST. (sessionObjs are created for each request, so they don't have to worry about getting out of sync with the db.) The nice thing about storing things this way is, of course, that you can stuff almost anything into it. The bad thing is, of course, that you can stuff almost anything into it. Make sure your definition of the session_data table makes the value column sufficiently large for your needs! Note that some databases gripe about inserting varchars as literal strings with newlines in them. For these, you should use the 'base64oneline' encoding format. (select it from the main edit window). To Do: See seperate file TODO.txt Anthony Baxter <anthony(a)interlink.com.au>, Sun Nov 21 17:58:02 EST 1999

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Question for those who have used Oracle/Zope : which OS works best ? best ?
by chas 22 Nov '99

22 Nov '99

I usually work on FreeBSD or NT but now have to set up a Zope-based site that will be powered by an Oracle8 DB. The Oracle8 DB is already running on an AIX box and now I have to choose an Operating System for the boxes that will run the Zope/Apache front ends. It seems that the DCOracle connector needs SQLNet (from the Oracle client) to be installed. Since Oracle has not been ported to FreeBSD, this means I have to look for a new OS for this project. In addition, I have noticed a lot of posts from people having problems integrating Oracle/DCOracle/Zope. I really want to concentrate on the web application and not waste days/weeks fiddling with Oracle connectors or SQLNet (with Oracle 7.x on NT I remember this could be troublesome to set up). ie. Ideally, it'd work right "out the box". Which OS would you recommend as the Zope webserver in this case ? Thank you very much, chas

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