[Zope] presenting content in Zope generated outside

Mon Mar 26 09:23:55 EDT 2007

Dears List-mates,

I have a program that process some data analysis and it's able to
generate html docs to be visualised in a web browser.

What I am trying to figure out is a way of wrapping this external html
docs inside Zope/Plone. Trying to explain it better: I would like to
present such data analysis results (and for that I can play with its
code in order to generate just the <body> block for example) as if it
were part of our plone website, i.e. using our website's layout with
its header and side columns etc.

That external data (and html doc) is accessible via LocalFS among
others reasons because they are big and temporary.

I am aware of importing html via FTP or webdav or even considering to
code a python external method to generate the data analysis results
independently of my external program, but I guess these approach
involves using a lot of ZODB resources, besides processing time, that
frankly I would like to avoid. Accessing data via LocalFS or similar
and just turn them presentable inside a zope website seems to be the
natural way, but I am missing how to do it.

I thought about using frames, but it sounds even worse. BTW, is Zope
able to work with frames?

Another possibility I imagined was if I could fill my external html
files with '<!-- @import ...' inside e.g. <head> block, but I really
don't know how far I can go with that idea, since my first tests
showed me that it can works for font style (*.css files) but then I
don't know what else to do, for example, to get the side menu and
calendar.

Anyway, any commentary here would be very appreciated. Sorry if I
couldn't express me better but I am prone to extend any point here if
you wish.

I thank very much in advance any help.

Cheers,
Alan