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Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook

Chapter 2. Using Development Tools

In this chapter, we will cover:

IPython: An interactive Python shell
ipdb: A replacement for regular Python debugger and usage from URL
DocFinderTab: Online Plone products documentation
Clouseau: Online Python shell
PDBDebugMode: Post-mortem debugger
plone.reload: Application of code changes without restarting Zope

Note

You can find more tools at http://plone.org/products?getCategories=dev. Especially, you should consider adding Products.PrintingMailHost in any development environment you are working on to help you with tasks involving sending e-mails.

Key benefits

Create custom content types, add utilities, and internationalize your applications using Plone products

Manage site installation, configuration, and customization with code instead of manual actions that are likely to be forgotten

Guarantee your code operation and performance by including automatic testing and caching techniques

Part of Packt's Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible.

Description

The Plone Content Management System is one of the best open source CMS, because by using Plone's development framework you can extend its functionality according to the specific requirements of your website. The Plone framework has lots of components that can be used to create add-ons or extensions called Plone Products. You can optimize your site for improved usability, accessibility, and security by creating custom Plone products.This book covers recipes that will help you create custom Plone Products and implement them on your website. Every topic covered in this book is accompanied by essential fundamentals and step-by-step explanation that will help you understand it better. With the help of this book you will be able to create custom Plone products that are well suited for your website.You can read the whole book or just pick recipes relevant for you; cross references help you understand the recipes even if you do not read them in order.If you work through the book in order, you will start by setting up an example project of a news website that will be developed throughout the book. You will learn about all of the necessary tools a Plone developer must have before starting any project. You will develop the website further by detecting problems and debugging them. You will be able to modify code on-the-fly or get help on how to do some tasks by installing and using special tools such as IPython, ipdb, and PDBDebugMode. You will then create a new content type, based on an existing one, and wrap the final product into a Python egg.You will set up automated testing to prevent errors in code that have evolved in the development stage. You will use paster to automatically create a new custom content type from scratch. You will improve the performance of your application by creating lightweight content types and following other recipes covered in this book. Key features such as usability, internationalization, accessibility and security are covered to make sure that your development and customizations will be at the level of Plone core and its most remarkable add-on products.You will improve your user interface by creating simple client-side visual changes and server-side manipulation of objects. You will learn to create and manage portlets by using Portlet manager and customize your website by modifying third-party products. Finally you will learn to communicate with an external non-Python-based system and make your products available for future use.

What you will learn

Set up a news website with many banners hosted in OpenX and get to know about all the tools you must have before starting any project

Easily detect and debug existing errors in the code by installing some special tools such as IPython, ipdb, and PDBDebugMode among others

Create a new content type (based on an existing one) using ArchGenXML and wrap the final product into a Python egg

Create a new content type from scratch automatically using paster

Complement your content types by placing related information in new portlets and manage these portlets

Improve the performance of your product by creating lightweight content types and taking advantage of other features of Plone

Secure some tasks and content types by setting permissions, roles, groups, workflows and configuration options

Protect the operation of your code from accidental changes by setting up some automatic tests such as unit tests, functional tests, and integration tests

Easily translate your website by using internationalization facilities in Plone

Display your final web page as per your requirement by adding new features to existing third-party products

Integrate your products with external software like Python packages or other systems via XML-RPC

Improve the user interface by creating simple client-side visual changes and server-side manipulation of objects with KSS

What do you get with Print?

Instant access to your digital copy whilst your Print order is Shipped

Paperback book shipped to your preferred address

Redeem a companion digital copy on all Print orders

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Maurits van Rees Jun 18, 2010

This is a very practical book. The authors do not present much theory, except when it is really needed to understand the recipes. With 70 recipes of about 5 pages each, there is not much room to go very deep into a subject. I think that does make for a book that I can point to in answer to questions on mailing lists: "Oh, just read that recipe in the cookbook on page 42."I would say the book is for beginning to intermediate Plone programmers. The only new information I saw for myself was about plone.app.content and dexterity. Still, it is good to have available when you think: "Today I want to bake a fresh portlet, let's get the cookbook." You will find good, solid information in this book.Read a more complete review on my weblog: [..]

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Kindle Customer Jun 16, 2010

This book contains 350 pages of expert-level advice for the experienced Plone developer. This is not a book for Plone newbies-- the authors state right up front that readers should have some understanding of Plone/Python/Zope, and I believe this is true. For those already aware of the basics, though, this book reads like the working notes of a top-level Plone consultant.The book is organized around a hypothetical 10 requirements presented to the reader for a client's website. (The 10 include such tasks as preparing for internationalization, allowing multimedia content in downloadable and playable form, and 8 other reasonable requests.) Throughout the book, the reader is told how to fulfill these 10 requirements. Along the way there are a multitude of best practices outlined, too.The book is set up to be read as a reference. Some chapters build on others, but many allow an immediate jump to the desired topic. This fits the book's flavor, which is more reference than overview.All things considered, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to undertake serious Plone 3 development.

Israel Saeta Pérez Jun 13, 2010

When I received a review request for Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook from Packt, the first thing I thought was: How didn't I know about this book before, and who are the authors? I'd certainly not heard about them (Juan Pablo Giménez and Marcos F. Romero) nor this upcoming book ever before, but it seems there are a lot of Plone books being written behind the scenes by people not hanging at #plone too. :)The list of reviewers, comprising Martin Aspeli, Alec Mitchell and Emanuel Sartor, being as they are core and very active developers, automatically made me think this was going to be an accurate and up-to-date book.This is the second book in the market about modern development with Plone, after Martin Aspeli's Proffessional Plone Development. And after having skimmed through it (if you try to proof-read this kind of books from top to bottom your brain can explode), I can say that it's probably going to become a classic invaluable reference as PPD already is.Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook spans over 350 pages full of useful tips, set-up instructions and step-by-step coding approaches to solve specific use-cases (that's why it's called "cookbook"). Even if the book title says Plone 3, I think it's just a Packt policy - one can be sure that most of the contents (if not all them) will be valid for Plone 4 too, and the authors even included some special instructions for Plone 4.The book show-cases the development of an hypothetical digital newspaper with Plone, covering the whole process: From installing Python and Plone in Linux or Windows (Mac OSX specifics aren"t covered in this book) to preparing the production environment, passing through the installation of useful development tools like ipdb, DocFinderTab or plone.reload, creating content-types using ArchGenXML, paster-aided plain Archetypes or Dexterity, internationalizing and localizing the product, building XML-RPC interaction with other systems, and more (see the full table of contents). All the features coded include automated tests, what is a Very Good Practice and will help devs to be less afraid of writing tests.The book is organized in a recipe-list fashion, in chapters, every recipe including "getting ready", "how to do it", "how it works" and "there is more" sections. Sometimes the separation of concerns between these sections is not very clear, but one can expect a series of short steps in "how to do it", to use as reference, and some brief explanation in "how it works".In my opinion, this is not a book for beginners. Even if there are some explanations in the "how it works" section of each recipe, they are almost always quite brief, and can certainly make you have to re-read and Google for more documentation often, if you really want to understand how the Zope Component Architecture, ZPT, skin layers, z3c.forms, etc. work. I see it more as a reference book for more advanced developers, who can also discover in this book some tricks and approaches they didn't know before - I certainly did!Summing up, this is a really useful reference for folks with previous developing experience in Plone. My sincere congratulations to the authors for their hard work to make this happen - I'm sure it will hit the shelves of every active Plone developer!

J. Kidd Jul 21, 2010

This book provides practical information on how to create a Plone product from beginning to end. It says on the cover that it provides "quick answers to common problems," but it actually does quite a bit more than that. It also provides you with tools that will help in making product development more effective.I come to this book as someone who has used Plone for many years, but would like to learn more about developing products for Plone. In addition to providing step by step instructions for common product creation tasks, the book also provides information on debugging tools, creating tests for your products, and packaging your products for distribution.So far, the book has held up to practical tests as well. It was able to help someone in our office, who had never created a custom content type before, create a new content type quickly and easily. We're thinking of using the book in our monthly Plone meetings to help the people who come to our group get up to speed in the creation of content types.If there is one problem with this book, it is that it is for Plone 3 when Plone 4 will be released soon. Much of what is here will still be useful, but there will be some changes. Of course, writing a book like this, you will always we trying to hit a moving target. Still, I would have liked to have seen a chapter at the end on what was coming in Plone 4 and what we could have expected to be different.But, as I've said, this book has already proved its usefulness to me. I would highly recommend it.

Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook: 70 simple but incredibly effective recipes for creating your own feature rich, modern Plone add-on products by diving into its development framework

What do you get with Print?

Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook

Chapter 2. Using Development Tools

Note

Introduction

Changing debug mode parameter in configuration file

Accessing an IPython powered shell

Note

How to do it…

Taking advantage of an enhanced interactive Python debugger with ipdb

Note

Note

How to do it…

Discovering Zope/Plone APIs and docstrings with DocFinderTab

How to do it…

Opening an online Python shell on Plone using Clouseau

Note

How to do it…

Debugging Zope exceptions with PDBDebug Mode

How to do it…

Applying code changes on-the-fly using plone.reload

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