[Zope] Best Practice for including Javascript in Zope Applications

Matt Hollingsworth mr.hworth at gmail.com
Fri Jan 4 04:17:05 EST 2008 

Hello,

Ok, I came up with a solution that I like; today I spent a little while
making it so I don't have to load things into memory before they are served.
Now it works quite nicely for serving out js/css/gui pics.  I won't post
what I did right now, as I haven't really cleaned it up and I'm ashamed of
how it looks at the moment,  but I'll post the usage of it to see if anyone
would like to use it after I clean it up:

...
from util import FileSystemResource #it's just in a utility module for my
current project at the moment
...

MyZopeObject(Implicit,Item,Whatever):

	#"js" and "css" are paths that are considered relative to my package
directory (not the cwd for zope).  It can be absolute too, if desired.
	js = FileSystemResource("js","Javascript Repository") 
	css = FileSystemResource("css","CSS Repository")

Now, say that there is ext-all.js in a directory called
"/path/to/zope/Products/MyProduct/js/".  You could then link to the java
script file by going to http://domain.com:8080/myZopeObject/js/ext-all.js.
In particular, in dtml, I have a standard_html_header that looks something
like this:

==standard_html_header.dtml==

<html>
<head>

<!--Set the title-->
<title><dtml-var title></title>

<dtml-comment><script src="&dtml-absolute_url;/js/navbar.js"/><!--GUTS
navbar--></dtml-comment>


<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
href="&dtml-absolute_url;/js/resources/css/ext-all.css">

<!--Source in local_js unless the variable isn't defined-->
<dtml-try >
  	<dtml-in expr="local_js">
	<script src="&dtml-absolute_url;/js/&dtml-sequence-item;"/>
  	</dtml-in>
<dtml-except><!--Do nothing-->
</dtml-try>

</head>

<!--Start the body-->
<body class="&dtml-id;-body" id="&dtml-id;-body">

<!--Set basic pre-nav header-->
<dtml-unless NO_HEADER>
	<h1 id="main-title">This is a title.</h1>
</dtml-unless>

==!End standard_html_header.dtml==

Then in MyZopeObject, I wrap up my DTML in a method like so:

..<other class stuff>...

_main = DTMLFile("dtml/main",globals())
def main(self):
	main_js=["ext-all.js","main.js"]

	return _main(self.REQUEST,local_js = main_js)


I did the whole local_js thing so I could control what JS got dropped into
what pages without having to write a different header for each one.  I will
probably also do the same thing for the css just in case I want
page-specific css files.

This is what I'm doing at the moment, and it's working great.  If this would
be useful to someone else, I'll give it more than an hour and a half of
thought, rewrite it more intelligently, and make it available.  Otherwise,
thanks to everyone for their comments!

-Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Nash [mailto:thedagdae at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 12:38 PM
To: Matt Hollingsworth
Cc: zope at zope.org
Subject: Re: [Zope] Best Practice for including Javascript in Zope
Applications

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
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> > > 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.
> >
>
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