Jim Abramson wrote:

Can anyone recommend a good resource, online docs, examples that specifically deal with methods/best practices/caveats for using external python code libs within Zope.

I have read the relevant chapters in Zope Book and done quite a bit of googling but can't seem to find detailed material on this. My situation involves, on the one hand, a sizeable 'instance space' application, and on the other, some python modules/packages that I need to teach the instance-space stuff to use. The instance app is too vast to realistically rewrite as a zope Product all in one shot - therefore I'm looking for a sane way to gradually add external functionality (and later, offload existing functionality from instance -> external). What I'm most interested in is a discussion of External Methods vs. Products as a means for doing this, memory and performance considerations, etc. The external code should know nothing about Zope, ZODB etc - so I suspect what I need to design is essentially some sort of proxy layer. (If this isn't specific enough I can happily elaborate.)

Write a simple Zope product which provides a "façade" object for your package; then add an instance of that object to your Zope, and have your templates / scripts use the external library through it. In a CMF / Plone application, such an object would be a "tool". Tres. -- =============================================================== Tres Seaver tseaver@zope.com Zope Corporation "Zope Dealers" http://www.zope.com