[Zope] Extracting just the string of the zope file or dtml object

[Andy Bulka]

How do I ensure that the string *contents* of my Zope object is passed to an
external method, rather than passing the zope object itself?

E.g. if
  mydtmldoc  is a DTML document with plain text inside it
  myFile     is a file object with content-type plain text
then when I call

<dtml-call "ProcessAstring1('a literal string')">
<dtml-call "ProcessAstring1(mydtmldoc)">
<dtml-call "ProcessAstring1(myFile)">

I get
 Got string
 Got DTML Document
 Got File

respectively in my external method.  I really just want the string contents
of these zope objects.  I want to be able to do all sortd of string
operations on them - but this is not working since python complains they are
not strings.  My test external method is simply

def ProcessAstring(astr):
    print 'Got', safetest(astr) # safetest I got off this mailing list, and
is listed below

How do I just get at the string being passed?  Or how do I just pass the raw
string?

thanks
Andy Bulka

-----------------------------

def safetest(object):
    if object is None:
        return 'None'

    s = str(object)
    if object==s:
        return 'string'

    try:
        t = object.meta_type
        return t
    except:
        pass

    try:
        l = len(object)
        if s[0]=='[': return 'list'
        if s[0]=='(': return 'tuple'
        if s[0]=='{': return 'dict'
        return 'sequence'
    except:
        pass

    try:
        t = object.timeTime()
        return 'DateTime'
    except:
        pass

    try:
        val = int(object)
        if val is object:
            return 'integer'
        return 'number'
    except:
        return 'unknown'