[Zope3-dev] Guidance on ZX3 learning project...

[Daniel]

Hi,

I'm interested in working on a contributory project within the ZopeX3
framework, but would welcome guidance as well as ideas as to its
feasability.  My motivation is both to use this as an exercise to teach
myself ZopeX3 and to provide a necessary package for the larger
community.  While I have not created public packages for ZopeX3 or
products for Zope2 before, I have played around with Zope2 for a bit,
and have a background in coding and scripting.

I'm interested in developing ecommerce / shopping cart functionality
within ZopeX3, somewhat similar to that provided by the successful
PHP-based OSCommerce product (GPL-d, available at www.oscommerce.org;
or its fork in the ZenCart project).  I know of some extant Zope-based
shopping cart packages, the most prominent probably being ZWarehouse
and PloneMall (CMFCommerce appears abandoned), but all run under Zope2
and use its technological foundations, and neither provide as much out
of the box functionality or ease-of-configuration as OSCommerce, to
speed adoption in the wider community.

I also know that there has been repeated requests on the z3-dev
mailing list for creation of some form of "Petstore"-like ZopeX3
package to showcase the Z3 functionality, and I imagine this might tie
into that interest.

What am I asking, then, right now?

1. Some thoughts on the predicted length of time of daily coding
(assume 6 hours or so a day) to tackle this type of project, if I'm
coming from
a position of not having worked with Z3 before (but otherwise a
competent programmer).  I know this is ambiguous since it's
inextricably tied to the offered functionality, but let's imagine some
first release that would at least engender interest in other Zope
folks using it.

2. Some possible offer of future handholding to point me in the right
direction and help shape the overall framework of the project.  (I'm
working through the Stephan Richter's ZX3 book right now, and envision
this type of help to involve something like:  "Hey, look at events and
subscribers for that, or use XML-RPC here, etc...)

3. Some idea as to whether others are interested in this project, and
if any folks might want to help lend a hand on a much more limited time
basis than I.

A starter question right now.  I'm a little unclear as to the role of
sessions as I hear them discussed as a future feature in ZX3.  Would
they be necessary to implement the type of functionality generally
required in a shopping cart solution?  When are they expected (I
initially heard when ZX3.1 was released, but no longer see it in the
list of TODO items for that release on the mailing lists)?  Can I
possibly code around them if they're not available now with maybe some
loss of functionality, and then reincorporate them later?  The primary
reference I can find:
http://mail.zope.org/pipermail/zope3-dev/2004-October/012436.html
seems a little inconclusive... Ideas, please?  

Thanks for the help, and best wishes,
Daniel



PS Stephan, I emailed you a long list of typos I found in your
excellent ZopeX3 book, twice in the past 2-3 months to your 'tufts.edu'
address, but haven't heard back.  I'm wondering if you received these
corrections or if I got caught in your spamfilter (though I did mail
them from my '.edu' address, which I reserve generally for private
correspondence).  Please let me know off-list and I'll get them to you
again.