"james w. howe" <jw-@allencreek.com> wrote:

I can do with it. Any debugging tips that anyone might have would be appreciated.

The Python/Zope combination does not seem to have any nice GUI for debugging... nothing like Visual C++ or Visual Cafe. But then, I have also worked with a few languages where I had only access to simple print statements... At first this might seem to be primitive, but one thing saves the day: in these languages you can modify most program files while the main application is running, like the case of Zope. (Long-running processes.) What I do nowadays for Zope is this: (1) In the standard_footer_html method (or equivalent), I print out whatever variable I want to print out. This includes a string that I store in the REQUEST variable, which you may call debug_output. Typically I print out three things: (a) REQUEST.debug_output, (b) the SESSION variables, (c) the REQUEST variable. (2) I have a flag in the root folder, and setting or unsetting this flag enables or disables the print out. So, when I move the development copy to the production copy, I simply have to unset the flag to suppress the debug printing. (3) I implement an external method called dprint(), and put it in the root folder. This method prints into the REQUEST.debug_output string. I can print from any dtml method/document, something like: <dtml-call "dprint('Hallo I am here')"> <dtml-call "dprint(REQUEST.myvar)"> You of course can also call the dprint() method from within external methods... or maybe you can implement it as a real Python module and put it inside your /lib/python/shared/... folder so you can import it from an external method file. --------------------------- The above method is good only if the program does not have crashes (Zope exceptions.) For nastier crashes, I physically go into the Python code and put print statements, so it prints to the console. Primitive, yes, but so far I have always been able to catch the bugs I wanted to catch, including a few from Zope itself and Sybase database adapter. --------------------------- Of course, if there were some product that implements a real debug para-server (serving on a TCP/IP port, so it's platform independent) with nice HTML GUI interface to poll (or even change) variable values via a web, and even stepping through the code, now, that'll be a wonderful product. :) Hung Jung ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com