[Zope-PTK] Re: [Zope-dev] Observable Interface?

[Tres Seaver]

On Fri, 10 Nov 2000, Chris Withers wrote:

> Does this mean all of the classes in the diagram at that URL have been
> implemented?

> How come the Catalog doesn't use it so CatalogAware
> (bleugh!) isn't needed anymore?

Heh, because we would have to make far-reaching changes
(essentially, add an event channel :) to make CA redundant;
otherwise, the catalog has no way to know *which* objects to
observe (not to mention the problem of maintaining tens of
thousands of point-to-point subscriptions within the catalog).

Chris Petrilli is working on a fishbowl proposal for CatalogNG;
I'm pretty sure he intends to adopt some kind of observer/event
scheme to make it work.

> Also, is there any documentation about how to actually use the
> Observable interface? (excuse my ignorance if I've missed it...)

Again, the wiki is it;  the code deployed in Zope 2.2 implements
the Observable interface, and is intended to be used as a mix-in,
like so:

  from OFS.SimpleItem import SimpleItem
  from OFS.DefaultObservable import DefaultObservable

  class Foo( SimpleItem, DefaultObservable ):
      """
          Some foo or other
      """
      ...
      def bar( self, ... ):
          """
          """
          ...
          self.notify( "bar" )

Clients register with a Foo instance using the methods of the
Observable interface, e.g.:

    foo.registerObserver( self.getPhysicalPath() + ( 'watchFoo',) )
  
When the Foo instance has its 'bar()' method called, it will
notify all registered observers, passing 'bar' as the event;  in
this case, the client's 'watchFoo()' method will be called, with
the foo object and 'bar' passed as parameters.

(Thanks for the prodding -- I just checked in a docstring
containing the substance of this email.)

Tres.
-- 
===============================================================
Tres Seaver                                tseaver@digicool.com
Digital Creations     "Zope Dealers"       http://www.zope.org