At 9:44 am -0400 3/5/00, Jason Cunliffe wrote:
Hello
An intermodal transport project I am working on needs more advanced DateTime tools than native Zope or the [lovely] CalendarTag product offer.
I've looked at the Python package mxDateTime http://starship.python.net/~lemburg/mxDateTime.html
...and YES it's just what we want.
It's certainly very full featured.
Q: How can we get _FULL_ access to all those features/functions/paramters/etc in Zope via DTML or otherwise?
Strategic and technical advice is needed... PythonExternal Methods vs. ZopeProduct vs. ???
We've tried wrapping some test functions from mxDateTime as PythonExternal methods, but [argghh] cannot pass parameters to them. Works ok in Python but not in Zope 8-(
Jason, There's another module called DateTime in the lib/python directory. This may well be causing conflicts with importing the relevant methods. You're probably seeing this namespace clash. This is similar to the PIL "Image" namespace clash that was mentioned on the list a while ago. The archives might be able to help. Shane Hathaway posted a message today about a DateTime patch, that fixes some outstanding issues with it.
Is it possible to pass parameters to and from DTML to External Python Methods? If so How..
Try this; <dtml-call "external_method1(REQUEST)"> or <dtml-var "external_method2(param1=value1,param2=value2)"> where external_method1 is def external_method1(self, REQUEST): # do stuff # strictly speaking you can get REQUEST from url_value = self.REQUEST['URL'] # now do some stuff that is not designed to return anything to the web browserL, # such as doing some management of your Zope installation return and external_method2 is def external_method2(self, param1, param2): import math # hugely complex maths that uses the Riemann-Zeta function and yields the variable 'forty_two' return forty_two There are some documents on www.zope.org that describe how to use external methods. That and the archived list on egroups.com and Chris Withers' archive at http://zope.nipltd.com/public/lists.html should help you out.
My dream is that mxDateTime becomes part of standard Python and thus Zope. But I confess I really do not undersatnd the realtionship between modules in the Python directory and what is available to call from Zope. Help. ]
I'd certainly like to see the mxDateTime function being used as a 'drop-in' replacement for the inbuilt DateTime. DCs reply is usually "ok, where's the patch?" - quite rightly!!. Trouble is my Python isn't up to that the moment.
Really hoping there is a good solution Thanks in advance.
- Jason Cunliffe
hth tone ------ Dr Tony McDonald, FMCC, Networked Learning Environments Project http://nle.ncl.ac.uk/ The Medical School, Newcastle University Tel: +44 191 222 5888 Fingerprint: 3450 876D FA41 B926 D3DD F8C3 F2D0 C3B9 8B38 18A2