[Zope] Re: [Zope-dev] help me convert from j2ee to zope

[Casey Duncan]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:06:43 +0000
Ryan Boder <icanoop at bitwiser.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 10:22:59AM +0000, Chris Withers wrote:
> > The zope-dev list for the development OF zope, not WITH it, so I'm
> > replying to the more appropriate zope at zope.org list...
> 
> Oops. Sorry. I was thinking that products were considered zope-dev. I
> switched my subscription to zope.
> 
> 
> > >the equivalent of a local interface in J2EE. In JBoss I would use a
> > >session bean as the remote user interface and it would manage
> > >entity beans. So in Zope if I have a non-persistent object as the
> > >XML-RPC published user interface, how can I have it access
> > >persistent objects within Zope?
> > 
> > This made no sense to me as a Zope developer, and it's YEARS since I
> > did anything EJB'ish. I suggest you try and present the problem
> > you're trying to solve, rather than trying to bash square JBoss
> > concepts into a round Zope hole...
> 
> Ok. An example problem I have is that my zope addon will manage tasks
> in a schedule. There would be a Task object and each time the user
> wants to add a new task, a new Task object needs to be created in the
> ZODB.

I would suggest using the CMF (and possibly archetypes) to construct a
task type. This can be prototyped as a document with properties
probably. Extra methods can be added through skins.

The prototype could then be baked into python classes if desired.
 
> I like to have a seperate object that is not persistent that acts as a
> client interface (client programs can make XML-RPC calls to it). So
> the client program would make an RPC call such as createTask() and the
> client interface object would then do the work of creating a new
> persistent Task object in the ZODB. The client interface object is
> published via XML-RPC, but the Task objects are not (they are
> implementation, not interface).

In CMF terms this would be a tool. A tool is a singleton object that
exposes interfaces for performing operations in the site. In zope any
public method you create will be XML-RPC callable, so you will get that
for free (with a couple of caveats).

> So I guess the following code would do that in the createTask()
> method...
> 
> afolder =
> myobject.restrictedTraverse('/path/to/folder/that/contains/Task/objec
> ts') manage_addMyThing(afolder,'new_id',...any other needed
> parameters...)

Or you could create a "portal_tasks" tool which abstracts the storage of
tasks:

portal_tasks.addTask(folder, id, foo, bar)

-Casey