[Zope3-Users] Re: zalchemy integration

[Stephan Richter]

On Monday 14 August 2006 01:00, Jeff Shell wrote:
> I (mildly) agree. In my `WebPageSupport` mix-in, I've added a method
> `renderProvider`. Primarily it was to get around calling the provider
> a second time and having its `update` method called again, although
> I've now added some a `hasUpdated` concept to our ContentProvider base
> classes. But these are what I've added to our class. Again
> `WebPageSupport` is a mix-in (so it can be used with some basice
> BrowserView based base classes, as well as some `formlib` base/edit
> form based classes) that turns a web page into a ContentProvider
> Manager, ensuring that providers that are mentioned in the standard
> template(s) as well as ones specifically referenced by a Page are all
> updated at the same time::
>
>     def updateProviders(self):
>         for provider in self.contentProviders():
>             provider.update()
>
>     def renderProvider(self, name):
>         provider = self.get(name)
>         if provider is None:
>             return u""
>         return provider.render()
>
> `updateProviders` is typically called in the `update` phase of the
> view/page, and `renderProvider` is typically called in the page
> template or other code (like our nevow.Stan / Seaside inspired
> system). This behavior is just a little bit more predictable than
> `provider:`, is usable outside of TAL/TALES, and jumps straight to
> `render` since it's typically being called in the rendering phase of
> the surrounding view anyways.

Right, so you fixed the problem with the provider TALES expression, which has 
to do update()/render() at the same time. My question is: How do you know 
which content providers are used by a view? Do you manually list them?

I was thinking about implementing a way to inspect TAL code to determine all 
the providers that should be looked up before rendering. I even talked to 
Fred about it already; but it is non-trivial, if I understand him correctly.

> (although, we still use `provider:` quite a bit for most of the core
> viewlet managers that are used in the main template that have become
> practically invisible to us, such as the ones that load up all of the
> head resources).

Right, I see you use viewlets/providers heavily; at least we are not the only 
ones. :-) I would be interested in a lot more dialog here to share best 
practices and code.

BTW, another part of the UI power tools is zc.table. I will publish a bunch of 
extensions later this week.

Regards,
Stephan
-- 
Stephan Richter
CBU Physics & Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student)
Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training