Hi, I have searched the lists archive and did not found a solution to my problem. I want to force a tree hierarchy using dtml-tree to expand a specific branch when it is rendered the first time. I use the following Python code borrowed from TreeTag.py (encode_seq() ) to encode the 'id' of the tree item where I want the tree to be opened : from string import join, split, rfind, find, translate from urllib import quote, unquote from zlib import compress, decompress from binascii import b2a_base64, a2b_base64 tbl=join(map(chr, range(256)),'') tplus=tbl[:ord('+')]+'-'+tbl[ord('+')+1:] tminus=tbl[:ord('-')]+'+'+tbl[ord('-')+1:] state=compress(str([id])) l=len(state) if l > 57: states=[] for i in range(0,l,57): states.append(b2a_base64(state[i:i+57])[:-1]) state=join(states,'') else: state=b2a_base64(state)[:-1] l=find(state,'=') if l >= 0: state=state[:l] state=translate(state, tplus) return state *********************************************** The dtml-tree that I want to manipulate is something like : <dtml-let id="''"> <dtml-tree id assume_children=yes id=id branches_expr="an_external_method(PARENT=id, USER=USER)"> <dtml-var title> </dtml-tree> </dtml-let> The problem is that when I display the value returned by this Python code for a given 'id' and compare it to the value of 'tree-e' in the REQUEST, they don't match. And I expect them to match. Can someone give me some lights ? Is my problem related to cookies or is it my encoding function that is used correctly ? Many thanks, Kamon Experts-MD.com