[Zope-dev] How can I find out who visited a URL within my Zope Product?

[Craeg K Strong]

Steve Alexander wrote:
>> My application can then automatically send notifications to others
>> based on the execution of the VisitURL Command.
>> I can send email to my group saying "So and so has seen the contract"
> 
> Incorrect.
> 
> This shows that they read the original email, and intended to view the 
> contract at the URL. However, after that point, we only know that Zope 
> attempted to send the page at the URL back to the browser. You have no 
> proof that such data was ever received by the browser in any way 
> meaningful to the end-user. This gets even more complicated when http 
> proxies are involved.

You are right, of course, but I believe that, for our purposes, this is
a distinction without a difference.  The notification is purely for
administrative purposes-- just a convenient reminder to our client if their
invoice has not been paid yet.  If *their* client denies that they have
seen the invoice, we don't have a legal basis for non-repudiation, but as it
turns out, this is a pretty rare problem in practice.

I suppose the only way to legally guarantee that someone has seen something
delivered as a web page is for them to attach their
digital signature to the form and submit it back to the server.

Ultimately we will probably have to do this, but for now the VisitURL
notification is enough...

--Craeg