[Zope-dev] Beginner doubts

[Emiliano Marmonti]

Hello all

I'm newbie with Zope, ZODB and so on. First of all I have choiced Zope
as application server and ZODB because I have to implement a
bibliographical project that handles a lot of hierarchichal data, with
need and will add in few months all the workflow related to send
documents to a reviewer, publish, and have to connect with other
bibliographic system through XML because of this is that I think could
be made very easily with Zope/Plone, isn't it?

The first thing that I've tried to implement is to add functionality for
search/add authors. For the business logic I have made an
external-script that have the abstractions and the persistent-logic.
After all the classes code I have defined two functions for invoking
inside Zope. The entire idea is to put inside a Persistent class
something that adds the functionality to search over the text of the
objects properties. I'have found in this list an example that uses a
Catalog, I think must be another way to search over a ZODB but have not
found any example. For me a catalog is OK, perhaps later will want a
TextIndex, but:

------- code ------


import sys
sys.path.append('c:\\Archivos de programa\\Zope\\lib\\python\\')
import ZODB
import Persistence
from Persistence import Persistent
from ZODB.FileStorage import FileStorage
from Products.ZCatalog.Catalog import Catalog

class Autor(Persistent):
     id=''
     name=''
     observaciones=''

     def __init__(self,id,nombre,comments):
             self.name = nombre
             self.id = id
             self.observaciones = comments

     def setName(self,nombre):
             self.name = nombre

     def setId(self,id):
             self.id = id

     def setObs(self,comments):
             self.observaciones = comments

     def getName(self):
             return self.name

     def getid(self):
             return self.id


class Autores:
     def __init__( self, file='dcAuthor.fs' ):
        self.file= file
        self.db  = ZODB.DB( FileStorage( file ) )
        self.co  = self.db.open()
        self.root= self.co.root()
        if self.root.has_key( 'cat' ):
             self.cat= self.root['cat']
        else:
             self.cat        = Catalog()
             ## I don't understand what is doing here
             self.cat.aq_parent= self.root
             self.root['cat']= self.cat

             self.cat.addIndex('id','FieldIndex' )
             self.cat.addIndex('name' ,'FieldIndex' )
             self.cat.addIndex('observaciones','FieldIndex' )
             get_transaction().commit()

     def setAutor( self, autor ):
        uid= id( autor )
        self.root[uid]= autor

        self.cat.catalogObject( autor, uid )
        get_transaction().commit()

     def searchAutor( self, **kw ):
        r= self.cat.searchResults( kw )
        paths= self.cat.paths
        root = self.root
        k= []
        for i in r:
                 id= i.data_record_id_
                 k.append( root[paths[id]] )
        return k



def AddAutor(nombre,obs,documento):
   autores = Autores()
   autor = Autor(documento,nombre,obs)
   autores.setAutor(autor)

def GetAutor(expresion,lista):
   autores = Autores()
   lista=autores.searchAutor(expresion)

------- end of code ------

I've tried this code with python. After waiting, python said:

------ python --------

>>> import dcAuthorDefClass
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "dcAuthorDefClass.py", line 7, in ?
    from Products.ZCatalog.Catalog import Catalog
  File "C:\Archivos de
programa\Zope\lib\python\Products\ZCatalog\__init__.py",
line 16, in ?
    import ZCatalog, Catalog, CatalogAwareness, CatalogPathAwareness,
ZClasses
  File "C:\Archivos de programa\Zope\lib\python\ZClasses\__init__.py",
line 20,
in ?
    import ZClass
  File "C:\Archivos de programa\Zope\lib\python\ZClasses\ZClass.py",
line 16, in
 ?
    import Method, Basic, Property, AccessControl.Role, re
  File "C:\Archivos de programa\Zope\lib\python\ZClasses\Method.py",
line 18, in
 ?
    import App.Dialogs, ZClasses, App.Factory, App.Product,
App.ProductRegistry
  File "C:\Archivos de programa\Zope\lib\python\App\Factory.py", line
19, in ?
    import Products, Product
  File "C:\Archivos de programa\Zope\lib\python\App\Product.py", line
44, in ?
    from Factory import Factory
ImportError: cannot import name Factory

------ end of python --------

My problem is that if I could not use a Catalog, what will I use? I
could put a set of objects into a file and recovering by the id, but
could not realize the way to search into the collection of objects and
obtaining a filtered set or list.

Another basic question. My first approach was to develop somenthing
external to Zope to put my abstractions and drive the file storage, is
this correct? Is there another way to map for example an abstraction
with a folder, another abstraction with a file and so on, and for search
using an standard catalog for example?

My last question. Supposing that anybody could help me to make the above
code work, I have a dtml-problem, how could I invoke an external method
with parameters? I mean, I wish to call GetAutor with an expression like
(name='a*') from dtml and after that iterate over the list that in some
way, has returned from the external method to the dtml.

Well, thanks a lot for your help and sorry by the extremely long of this
mail
Emiliano.