[Zope] Zope vs other Web Languages.

[Michael R. Bernstein]

Jens Benecke wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 08:00:41PM -0700, Michael R. Bernstein wrote:
> > Steven Grimes wrote:
> 
> > ... With Zope, I can build (for example) a fairly sophisticated Intranet
> > for a company in a couple of days, without breaking into a sweat. This
> > Intranet will include personal folders for the users, a bug/ticket
> > tracker, industry news, departmental pages, and any of a dozen other
> > goodies like discussion forums and a collaborative documentation system.
> 
> Just a small question in between: You can build this site because all the
> required functions are available as Zope modules (or "products") and you
> just need to plug them together, right? How would Zope cope if you did
> _not_ have these ready-made modules or if they didn't fit your needs?

Mmm. I can build this site that *quickly* because ceratin
functionality is available as Products, or part of the Zope
core functionality. Authentication, security, and delegation
are built in, for example.

> What I mean is this: In PHP you _can_ add PHPLIB, which is a class library
> does user management, authentication, sessions, forms with automatic error
> checking (both Javascript and server-side), database-independant SQL
> connections and much more for you.  Soon there will be PEAR, which is
> comparable to CPAN for Perl and will offer all kinds of modules.
> 
> But if you need to do your _own_ applets (e.g. plug in something like a
> client-side Javascript calendar that connects to a server-side SQL-DB
> before displaying itself and when acted upon pre-fills some input fields -
> just an example), how difficult would that be?

Client side javascript (Bleh!). :-) I've built several small
applications from scratch, such as an FAQ manager, and I'm
working on a couple of bigger ones now which I'll release as
Zope Products.

> I know the OOP model fairly well, so I understand you can extend Zope's
> classes to an extent to fit your needs. However ATM I'm a little worried
> about Zope when I see people posting 20-line DTML code just to squeeze a
> string through a regexp. (Or five-line Python - Perl, PHP, etc. can do it
> in one.)

Python emphasizes legibility over terseness. It's a trade
off that won't appeal to some, I'm sure.

I wouldn't suggest using DTML for your applications business
logic, anyway. Use Python for that. DTML is very well suited
to presentation logic tasks. This also helps enforce
separation of content/presentation/logic. Again, a trade off
that may not appeal to some.

> > Then I can refine it over another couple of days. By any sane measure,
> > this is far more cost effective for a company than paying two or more
> > programmers to build something equivalent in a couple of months, just to
> > save a grand on hardware.
> 
> That's precisely why I started looking at Zope. I'm not interested in a Web
> GUI, in dividing content and design (We're a team of two developers, we can
> organize ourselves without CVS like functions) or such. What I'm interested
> in is making my site
> 
> - easy to extend later (with well sorted out OOP, this should be
>   manageable)

True.

> - easy to manage even if it gets bigger (not having to worry about things
>   like "where do I put this new feature")

Zope's pretty good at that, IMO.
 
> - and secure, of course. (ie. built-in filtering for FORM variables and
>   such things would be nice. PHP does this with addslashes() and the like).

Well, Zope does automatic casting of variables by using a
simple naming convention in your forms (ie. <input
name="size:int">) the ':int' is stripped off the actual
variable name when you want to access the value.

> Last but not least: Is there a Zope intro for people like me who already
> _have_ a couple years of Web development with PHP and other languages and
> don't need things like "insert common HTML header/footer" presented as
> Zope's primary features?

Have you checked out the New Riders Zope Book:
http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/ZB

Or this one:
http://www.handshake.de/~dieter/pyprojects/zope/book/chap1.html
http://www.handshake.de/~dieter/pyprojects/zope/book/chap2.html
http://www.handshake.de/~dieter/pyprojects/zope/book/chap3.html

HTH,

Michael Bernstein.