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etcUserFolder Product
by Michel Pelletier 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

Greetings, (This is crossposted because it is a product anouncement, and contains interesting developer pointers) I've have massaged the source code for UserDb and created a new user folder products called etcUserFolder. This products authenticates off of a flat file of usernames:cryptedpasswords. If there is anything trailing the crypted password it is ignored, so any /etc/passwd file will work. It is generaly not recommended, however, to use your /etc/passwd file for security reasons. This is an unsuported product and has been written because it was asked for a few times, and I felt the community could use another good example of writing user folders. It also shows off cookie authentication which Brian perfected with UserDb. Here is the documentation: etcUserFolder requires a directory called 'etcUsers' in which to place your file containing the uid:pwd pairs. This directory may be an INSTANCE_HOME (typicaly your top level Zope dir), SOFTWARE_HOME (typicaly 'lib/python') or in the etcUserFolder directory. Jim wrote a nifty function called getPath that sniffs all of these places for a directory and file of your choosing. This function is included in etcUserFolder and will be included as a standard function of the next release. Other Product authors may find it interesting. Since the flat file is meant to be b/w compatable with /etc/passwd and htpasswd style files, there is no Role associated with the users it authenticates. You can specify a default role which is, by default, 'etcUser'. I have not done extensive testing of this, therefore it is a pre-release. Please send bug-reports and hopefully a patch to me (michel(a)digicool.com) http://www.zope.org/Download/Prereleases/etcUserFolder/etcUserFolder.tar .gz -Michel

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Crossposting
by Pavlos Christoforou 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

Is it possible to have a filter on the mailing lists that will drop any posts on the main zope site that appear to be cross-posted on the zope-dev site? Pavlos

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count of items in group?
by julian＠zereau.net 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

Using the "in" tag's grouping capability, is there any way to get the count of items in that group? I need this so I can have a table with one row per item and a cell rowspanned for all the group's items (eg: related products and their picture). --- Julian Morrison Programmer (Zereau Ltd)

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RE: [Zope] [ZDP] Announcing the Zope Documentation Project
by Paul Everitt 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

Phil wrote: > If ther's anything I can do, let me know. > > Ain't collaboration wonderful? Count me in as well. I'm meeting with some folks today to get a Zope training course scheduled. I'll create the preliminary docs which they will improve and use for the course. Thus I'll have some some material for a (perhaps four day) training course to contribute. BTW, is there any interest here in a Zope training course? --Paul

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Re: [Zope] [ZDP] Announcing the Zope Documentation Project
by Phil Harris 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

You thinking of running one in UK 8^) ----- Original Message ----- From: Paul Everitt <Paul(a)digicool.com> To: Phil Harris <wmlph(a)d033.ml.uwcm.ac.uk> Cc: <zope(a)zope.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 1999 1:54 PM Subject: RE: [Zope] [ZDP] Announcing the Zope Documentation Project > >Phil wrote: >> If ther's anything I can do, let me know. >> >> Ain't collaboration wonderful? > >Count me in as well. I'm meeting with some folks today to get a Zope >training course scheduled. I'll create the preliminary docs which they >will improve and use for the course. Thus I'll have some some material >for a (perhaps four day) training course to contribute. > >BTW, is there any interest here in a Zope training course? > >--Paul

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RE: [Zope] ZPublisher and creating children
by Paul Everitt 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

Cees wrote: > The Container, IMHO, "knows" too much about the Child in this > case, and > it's hard to modify the attribute set of the Child class. Am I doing > something wrong? Is there a design pattern here I'm not aware of? Actually this example shows the beauty of Zope/Bobo programming -- the code looks completely like normal Python code, no CGI hackery involved. Anyway, this is really a Python question, IMO. You don't the arguments to the Child's constructor to be hardwired in the Parent, right? You could take a route where pass a dictionary, e.g. REQUEST, into the Child's constructor and let it figure out for itself what it needs. This feels less OO and doesn't let Zope/Bobo help you with type conversions and raising exceptions for missing arguments. --Paul

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Date Manipulation
by Luke Duff 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

Thanks for the help, but... My problem is a little bit harder than that. The data in field2 is date *and* time. So like this: field1 field2 ------ --------------- red 3/1/99 10:00 AM blue 3/1/99 11:00 AM green 3/1/99 03:00 PM brown 3/2/99 10:00 AM yellow 3/2/99 04:30 PM I've seen in the guide where you can format a data field when outputting, but how do actually extract the day-of-the-month number and put it in a temp variable. The pseudo-code I've used before to do this before is: tempday = 0 for each record if tempday<>dayofmonth(datefield) then print out a header print out other fields tempday = dayofmonth(datefield) next I'm just having a little trouble translating that into DTML. Creating a simple temporary variable seems overly complicated. Luke ============================================================ Martijn Pieters <mj(a)antraciet.nl> wrote: At 05:10 03/03/99 , Luke Duff wrote: <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>I'm *really* newbie. I have table with data like this: <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>> <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>field1 field2 <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>------ ------ <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>red 3/1/99 <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>blue 3/1/99 <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>green 3/1/99 <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>brown 3/2/99 <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>yellow 3/2/99 <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>> <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>I'd like to render this in DTML from the data: <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>> <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Monday, March 1 <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> red <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> blue <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> green <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Tuesday, March 2 <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> brown <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> yellow <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>How do I do that? <mj(a)antraciet.nl>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> You can use the #in tag's grouping features for this. ------------------------------------------------------------ News, Opinion, Culture for Geeks -- http://www.geeklife.com

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Some tough questions about zope... (long)
by Tony McDonald 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

Hi all, This is quite a long email where I ask a lot of questions about Zope, but I hope you'll be lenient with me as I think I have a few hard decisions to make! Some background: I'm one of the web developers here, with a remit to implement a curriculum database that can; (a) support the Medical Faculty here (b) get rolled out to three other Medical-related sites, each with their own 'look and feel' (c) possibly implement a University-wide curriculum database. The curriculum database is essentially delivering online study guides (over 100 for each Faculty) whose source is originally from very well marked up Word Documents. In addition, we include multiple choice questions, file upload of lecture notes etc. and some 'active' web pages showing dynamical processes in medicine etc. The curriculum database needs to be searchable across its entire breadth (although initially restricted to the one site), so that students and faculty can find occurences of, say, 'lung cancer' in lecture resources - this is to plan for curriculum management, so that we can find out if we're pushing subjects too much (or indeed, whether we're pushing a subject at all!). We have other applications (nearly all of which are written in Perl/PHP3) and want to seemlessly integrate them into the curriculum database. Currently we do all our development work on Unix, using Apache virtual web servers, MySQL as our database engine and Perl running as a CGI for most of our applications. My input has been to introduce PHP-3 (an Apache module with a bulit-in XML parser) and some XML knowledge to the group. I've been looking at a scenario where our study guides are converted in XML using Omnimark and held as static XML documents in a database. They are then rendered into HTML/RTF and put into static web directories. The student can run a program that extracts elements from selected XML documents and creates a customised set of HTML pages or RTF document that is built for them 'on the fly'. My manager was a bit worried about all these static pages lying about and to be honest so am I, but extracting the relevant XML from a database to render into individual HTML pages seems a massive drain on the system. I found out about Zope Monday morning, dl'ed it, installed it, got one or two things working... and have been worried sick ever since. My problem? is that I can see how Zope can do so much for us, but it seems to need a hell of a gut-wrench to do so. There also doesn't seem to be an easy 'half-way' house to move to Zope. I've read a lot of the documentation, and am doing so constantly, but the wisdom of the list would be very helpful indeed. The questions: a) Is there a way for us to 'dump' the non-dynamic parts of a Zope database into static HTML pages. This would act as a way to say to the team "look, we have a parachute!". b) Can I integrate with the Perl/PHP3 programs that we have (the Perl programs are mainly .cgi, but the PHP3 programs are server-side scripted, and as such are embedded into the HTML itself). This is so that I can c) Is there any way of using the XML documents that I'm creating into the database and parsing them to produce either HTML or RTF output? d) I know that this a terrible question to ask... but is Zope likely to 'remain' open-source (we're worried about getting stuck with a proprietary system)?. e) Can I 'point' an Apache virtual server to run a Zope cgi (ie dropping the :port requirment). f) I'd like to have the option to have user authentication information coming from a database - is this possible? g) We have something like 200 main level directories holding the study guides, each with up to 200 files in them - is that pushing the Zope database too far? h) We also need resources such as QuickTime movies, images PowerPoint slides etc. to be uploaded - would they sit in the database or can they be held somewhere else (and what happens about file name conflicts)? i) Does Zope have the equivalent of 'server logs', which we use for research. j) Is it possible to have a 'pointer' at a location in the Zope database that will point to a 'real, honest to goodness' HTML file on the server (ie something like a redirect..oops I think I may have answered my own question) and lastly k) What kind of loads have people put Zope under (10,000 +hits a day, 100k?). We have one application which has 170 Medical Students sitting in front of screens and clicking a button at the same time (they're selecting their final year options) which then starts 170 CGI-based Perl processes off interrogating and updating the database. This really grinds the system down... I hope that I haven't bored everyone to tears here - it's just that Zope seems to do an awful lot of what I need, and I'd really like to know what I'm letting myself in for if I start using it for everything I do.... many many thanks, tone. ------ Dr Tony McDonald, FMCC, Networked Learning Environments Project The Medical School, Newcastle University Tel: +44 191 222 5888 Fingerprint: 3450 876D FA41 B926 D3DD F8C3 F2D0 C3B9 8B38 18A2

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RE: [Zope] AUTHENTICATED_USER, and what you can do with it.
by Michel Pelletier 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

> -----Original Message----- > From: Anthony Baxter [mailto:anthony@interlink.com.au] > Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 1999 3:21 AM > To: Martijn Pieters > Cc: zope(a)zope.org > Subject: Re: [Zope] AUTHENTICATED_USER, and what you can do with it. > > > > > What you could do, is write your own UserFolder/User combo, > that stores a > > last-access time on the User object, and checks for this > every time a user is > > authenticated. If the difference is greater than, say 15 > minutes, you force a > > reauthentication by raising a permission denied. > > I tried playing with this once upon a time, but I found that > the stupid > browser still cached the original result and would continue > to use it after > the failed login/relogin combination. Most frustrating. > Cookies or passing around secret messages would be the way to avoid this, don't use Basic authentication at all. The UserDB product shows off a User Folder than uses cookies, and possibly today I am releasing a User Folder product that authenticates off of a flat file, like /etc/passwd for alpha testing which also uses either Basic or Cookie auth. If you use Cookie auth you are presented with a login/logout screen to set/clear the cookie. -Michel > Anthony > > > _______________________________________________ > Zope maillist - Zope(a)zope.org > http://www.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope >

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RE: [Zope] need help with IIS/ODBC
by Paul Everitt 03 Mar '99

03 Mar '99

Martijn wrote: > I have exactly the same problem with an Access database, same > error. I'll file > a bug report. Good timing. We are planning a Collector Day At The Beach pizza party on Friday. We'll gather everybody together for a couple of hours, discuss a bunch of submitted issues, and try to clear them out. I'll articulate a policy on support within a week. We still haven't emerged from our network hell -- our dedicated line hasn't been installed yet -- but things are slowing getting under control. <blatant plug>I want to double the number of people working here within two months. If anybody wants a job at Zope HQ, email me!</blatant plug> --Paul

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