[Zope] Simulating static URLs, end-user session management

[Robert Wentworth]

Martijn Pieters wrote:
> 
> At 23:38 14/03/99 , Robert Wentworth wrote:
> >A)  Are there reasonable ways of arranging to have
> >    the URLs for some/many Zope generated pages appear, as
> >    far as the outside world is concerned, to be URLs
> >    for static HTML pages?
...
> There is little reason to avoid naming your objects with the extension
> built into the ID, like everywhere.html. You can then simply refer to the
> object using that ID, which to a not so smart indexing bot will look like
> an HTML file (but it should *really* look at the MIME-type...). 

Perhaps I'm failing to understand something.
Looking at pages on zope.org and some obviously dynamic pages
on other sites, they all return a MIME-type of "text/html".   Which I
think means that a smart indexing bot should *not* simply look at the 
MIME-type.

As I understand it, most search engine robots try to exclude dynamic
content because of the justifiable fear that once they start exploring
a web of dynamic content they could get lost in an infinite or
near-infinite search space.  I've read that as a result of this, 
search engine robots do things like refuse to index any URL with 
"cgi-bin" in the path, or which do not end in an approved recognized 
file extension.

Do you have a different perception of search engine robot policies/strategies?

> The only
> problem would be referencing the object, as you have to take precautions to
> make sure Python doesn't try to reference the attribute named 'html' on the
> object 'everywhere'.

Guess I'm going to need to experiment.  I'm a little fuzzy on how this
would work (but then I'm a little fuzzy in general at this point).

> So, as long as you name your DTML Documents that are to be indexed with the
> .html extension, everything should go fine.
> 
> >B) On another topic entirely, I am wondering about the issue
> >of tracking sessions of end-users.
...
> No, Zope has no Session tracking facilities at this moment. DC is however
> working on this. At the moment you will find a 'Session' object in your
> Zope distribution, but this is a different concept altogether, and will be
> renamed to 'Version' when client session objects appear.

Are there any projections available re the timing of this?  I'm wondering
about how much effort to spend on ad-hoc interrim measures.

FWIW, in my mind an ideal client session scheme would allow multiple strategies.
In most cases using cookies works out for the best, but I would like to be
able to accommodate anti-cookie zealots as necessary.  On the other hand,
I don't want to clutter URLs with session-id's if I don't need to.  (I suppose
having authenticated users is yet another strategy, and one that Zope currently
seems oriented towards.  Fine if users really want or need to get into your
site or need to perform authorized operations, but not so good if you're trying 
to entice them in.)

Robert Wentworth