[Zope] Best Practice for including Javascript in Zope Applications

Thu Jan 3 12:38:00 EST 2008

Matt,
  Please keep us updated on your strategy for serving extjs. I am also
considering making my application a product for distribution but I was
thinking along the lines of an install script for macs that would set
up the apache webserver. I also like your approach.

BTW, I haven't done it, but couldn't you just store an object in zodb
that has a pointer to  your video on the filesystem and access the
video via a zope product? But maybe that is what LocalFS does, I
haven't checked.

see ya in the extjs forum. Just do a search for "zope"
Tim

On 1/2/08, Matt Hollingsworth <mr.hworth at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yep!  I have had very good luck with it so far; my little hack that I posted
> works like a (klutzy) charm and ExtJS is great with zope.  The ExtJS folks
> are very well organized, and the library is quite powerful.  It's working
> great.  However, my application doesn't have quite the segregation that
> yours does; ExtJS and zope (DTML in particular) are much more intermingled,
> and can't be easily separated.  This application is actually a frontend for
> a Java library that controls instruments at CERN (a research lab I work
> for), and I love the solution that it has presented.  It works like a charm.
> (in case you're curious, it makes use of a wonderful python library I ran
> across called JPype (http://jpype.sourceforge.net) to execute the Java code)
>
> I am going to be accessing Zope through apache with the VHM, but there are
> multiple reasons why I don't want to serve the js through apache.  This same
> principle is the reason that I don't want to upload things through FTP or
> WebDAV.  I'm making a product, and I would like to keep it atomic, i.e., I
> want the only install procedure to be "copy product folder to
> instance/Products".  Uploading via WebDAV, or hosting the javascript using
> separate software, defeats that purpose.
>
> The solution that Tom proposed (LocalFS) seems to be what I want, but the
> problem is that I think it is way too out of date; it crashed my zope server
> (2.10.5) when I installed it.  It says nothing can be found after I add an
> instance through the ZMI, and this is after I fixed a deprecated import (
> from OFS.content_types import find_binary -> from zope.app.content_types
> import find binary).  I had to completely remove the product to get my Zope
> instance to work again.
>
> I'm getting the feeling that there isn't really a (recent) canned solution
> for accessing file system content, which is... strange at best, considering
> all the power that zope has at its disposal.  You would think that accessing
> the file system would be present just because it is so simple to do.  I'm
> not complaining, as I'm *very* happy with zope, I'm just surprised :).  I
> realize that zope's principle is to store everything in the database, but
> this is unacceptable for content such as video files, right?  I mean the
> ZODB file would be absolutely humongous (and slow?  I don't know for sure
> how it's implemented).
>
> If there isn't already a working solution, I would be happy to come up with
> one; I could just hack out the parts of LocalFS that work, add a few
> features, and repackage it into a new product.  It's not difficult to do (my
> little trivial solution already would work fine if I did a non-dumb
> implementation of the file-serving logic), and as much as I would like to
> use it for other projects, it would be worth my time.  For example, I want
> to make a little video/music server as a personal project unrelated to my
> current one, and I really don't want to store things in the ZODB if I can
> help it... 1 video = +1 gig ZODB? :S
>
> I don't know much about zope obviously, so if I get some vehement objections
> to this route, I'll pick another :)
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Matt
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Nash [mailto:thedagdae at gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 2:03 PM
> To: Tom Von Lahndorff
> Cc: Matt Hollingsworth; zope at zope.org
> Subject: Re: [Zope] Best Practice for including Javascript in Zope
> Applications
>
> I am writing an application that uses extjs as the front end and zope
> on the back and they work together really well.
> I am using a webserver to server the extjs library and everything else
> comes out of zope.  So far I have had no trouble with relative links
> or files broken up in different locations. It may be because I have
> fully committed to having an extjs front end. I typically serve a page
> out of zope, it calls the extjs library as well as custom JavaScript
> files. The web2.0 style page then makes multiple xhr calls back to
> zope to load smaller html and json fragments. Works like a charm and
> has the additional benefit of letting me cache the majority of the
> front end in the webserver and in the users browser.
>
> Have fun because you have just come across a wonderful
> combination...extjs and zope!
> Tim
>
>
> On Jan 2, 2008 6:38 AM, Tom Von Lahndorff <tom at modscape.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Jan 1, 2008, at 7:20 PM, Matt Hollingsworth wrote:
> >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I'm new to developing for zope, and I have a quick question
> > > regarding some best practices when using Javascript in zope
> > > applications.
> > >
> > > I would like to use Ext JS (http://www.extjs.com/ ) in an
> > > application that I am writing.  It is a fairly extensive library, so
> > > I didn't really want to copy/paste every single file into a dtml
> > > method.  I looked all over the place for some discussion on this
> > > subject, but only found things relating to plone (which apparently
> > > has a javascript registry); however, I wish to stay away from plone
> > > for this particular application.
> > >
> > > What should I do to use these libraries?  Is there a canned solution
> > > for this sort of thing?
> > >
> > > Thank you much!
> > >
> > > -Matt
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Zope maillist  -  Zope at zope.org
> > > http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope
> > > **   No cross posts or HTML encoding!  **
> > > (Related lists -
> > > http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce
> > > http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )
> >
> >
> > You can ftp the files to a "static" directory on the file system and
> > use LocalFS to access them.
> >
> http://wiki.zope.org/zope2/LocalFS__________________________________________
> _____
> >
> > Zope maillist  -  Zope at zope.org
> > http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope
> > **   No cross posts or HTML encoding!  **
> > (Related lists -
> >  http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce
> >  http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )
> >
>
>