[Zope] Return values for html display?

[Stephen Pitts]

On Sat, Dec 04, 1999 at 11:32:01PM -0700, jiva@devware.com wrote:
> So, I have set up some external methods that do some stuff, and I
> ultimately want to display html from them.  However, I find the only
> way I can do this is to return it from my function.  print() seems
> only to send it to the zserver log.  Soooo, my question is, is this by
> design?  
Yes. I'd guess that the internals of Zope use print() to output debug
messages and there's some IO redirection going on that dumps it to the
log file. 

> Is there some way to get print() to actually shoot html to
> the page the end user sees?  
If you must, build an output string as you go along and then return the
string at the end of the method. But, this isn't the ideal mechanism.


> Is there a reason I wouldn't want to do
> this?
From what I've gathered by my limited exposure to it, Zope is about 
seperating presentation (HTML)  and content (the data inside of the
HTML). There's an easier way to build a page than in straight
Python. Either call your ExternalMethod from a DTML Document, or
use the DocumentTemplate package to create HTML on the fly. A JDBC book
(Java Database API) I've got preaches against combining two programming
languages (HTML + Python) because the resulting mess can be difficult to
maintain.


> 
> -- 
> "Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons 
> for it afterwards."
> -- Soren F. Petersen
Good quote!

> 
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-- 
Stephen Pitts
smpitts@midsouth.rr.com
webmaster - http://www.mschess.org