Rik, After re-reading my post, you are correct that I wasn't as clear as I should have been with my original post, in part because I'm not clear how a good way to do this is. I am not connecting to a SQL database, and at this point do not want to. What I would like to do is have a list of values such as: 'Art' 'Biology' 'Business' 'Chemistry'.... I would like that this list could easily be edited by someone that knows very little about Zope, HTML, DTML, etc. I would also like that this list be editable using a web form without the Zope mangement interface, however if the mangement interface needs to be used (or some other editor) that is acceptable. Once I have this list, I would like to be able to call it into a loop to populate a set of checkboxes. Currently, I have hard-coded these checkboxes to be populated in DTML method as follows (The "real" application has many more options): <dtml-in "('Art', 'Biology', 'Business', 'Chemistry')"> <input type=checkbox NAME="database_keywords" value=<dtml-var sequence-item>><dtml-var sequence-item> </dtml-in> This successfully makes a list of checkboxes that one can select to be entered into an object. This form also has a number of other text and string fields, but at this point this is the main one I would like to be able to not have to hard code. The main reason I don't want it hard-coded is that if someone entering a new entry wants to add a subject on the fly, I would like them (providing they have permission) to be able to easily do so by going to a different screen. What I want is that instead of having the hard-coded subject keywords, as in my above example that they be read from a list (preferably stored in Zope as single object (DTML Method?), or from a series of object titles in a single folder. Basically I want to replace "('Art', 'Biology', 'Business', 'Chemistry')" in the above example with some sort of dtml call to read these values from a list. Ed C. On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Rik Hoekstra wrote:

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I currently have a form that allows me to select a choice of keywords to describe an Item that I am entering into a Zope object. (See http://phoebe.rider.edu:8080/Athena/entries/entry_addForm (more specifically, the Database Keywords check-boxes)). This is one of about 25 fields. I am currently generating the list of selection keywords using a dtml-in hard-coded loop as described in AlexR's How-to on selection lists (http:www.zope.org/Members/AlexR/SelectionLists). This works fine, but I would like to get this values from a list stored in another object/method/file/(?) that can be edited more easily (hopefully, via a web form. My question is, how should I begin to do this?

Hm, the question is not entirely clear to me. You could get/store these values in many ways.

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Besides needing a way to call the list into my loop, I need to figure out how /where to store the list.

Using a list in dtml, you could use anything that returns a Python list or can be turned into a list. This includes (for example) SQL databases, Tiny Tables, Zcatalogs and in general anything that returns a ResultSet (if I remember the term correctly).

Objects also have properties. Property types that return a list include token and lines. Properties can be manipulated with manage_editProperties and manage_changeProperties (see for a short guide the ZQR at http://zdp.zope.org/projects/zqr) or some of the DTML guides. If you define ZClasses you may do even more complicated things with propertysheets.

Hard coded lists could also be returned from DTML methods residing in the acquisition path of an object. For example:

<dtml-return expr="['a', 'b', 'c']">, but you could also imagine more intricate things. The same may be accomplished by PythonMethods or External Methods.

You, see, too many possibilities. It depends on what exactly you want what you need. If you provide more details, we may be able to help you somewhat more.

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Any starting points would be greatly appreciated.

hth

Rik