2012 ·English ·29 slides ·1656 views

Pragmatic plone projects

The document discusses best practices for completing pragmatic Plone projects based on lessons learned from a large Plone project for Weishaupt, a major heating systems company. It covers common customizations required in projects and recommends patching Python code and resources through forks, branches, and overrides rather than directly modifying third-party packages. The talk also provides tips for working within constraints of limited budgets, resources, and timeframes and keeping designers happy through sample content.

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Uploaded: 10 October 2012
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Pragmatic Plone Projects Plone Conference 2012 Arnhem Andreas Jung ZOPYX Ltd. www.zopyx.com, info@zopyx.com

Speaker • long-time Python, Zope, Plone developer and contributor • Lead developer and principal consultant of ZOPYX Limited – Zope, Python, Pyramid, Plone projects – large portals, intranet, internet, extranet – Electronic Publishing – complex domain-specific applications

This talk is about • practical hints surviving your next Plone project • best practices • lessons learned from our last larger Plone project • stuff perhaps covered already by the Plone trainings

Relaunch weishaupt.de • Weishaupt: – major vendor of heating systems – 480 M€ revenue • Large company portal on top of Plone 4.2 • Phase 1: – implementation and DE content – 4 months • Phase 2: – 20 subsidaries – more than 30 languages

weishaupt.de

Project constraints (1/3) There is no real-world project with • unlimited budget • unlimited human resources • unlimited time

Project constraints (2/3) Resources Budget Time

Project constraints (3/3) Conclusions • usually impossible finding the „perfect“ solution • the „perfect“ solution is „mission impossible“

Getting things done • within a reasonable time-frame • on budget • with the available human resources

Common customizations • Bugs in Plone and 3rd-party packages are all around you • Particular behavior of Plone or 3rd-party packages is a common project requirement • What must be usually customized: – Python code (browser views, skin scripts) – Resources (browser view templates, JS, CSS)

Where to fix things? • Package maintainer (Plone and 3rd-party) love – bug reports – bug fixes – contributions • Stuff on Github: Fork & Pull request • SVN repositories: svn branch & svn merge – check if the package is maintained – ask the maintainer for merging your changes or merge yourself – move packages to Github if appropriate

Where and how to customize things? • Is your required change of interest for the public? – fork on Github – branch in SVN – speak with the package maintainers • Your change satisfies an absurd customer request? – keep it for yourself.

(Monkey) Patching Python code • Monkey patching: „dynamic modifications of a class or module at runtime“ (Source: Wikipedia) • MP in general should be considered evil and bad-style • MP may have side-effects • Use MP carefully (and only when you know what you are doing)

Monkey patching in Python Original (foo.py) Patched version (my_foo.py) class Foo: def my_bar(self): return 43 def bar(self): return 42 from foo import Foo Foo.bar = my_bar # or (needed in some situations) Foo.bar.func_code = my_bar.func_code

Monkey patching Plone collective.monkeypatcher (patches.zcml) ZCML-level configuration of patching <configure...> <include package="collective.monkeypatcher" /> information: <monkey:patch • module-level patches description="ISE-42: OFS.Image.tag()" • class-level patches class="Products.CMFCore.FSImage.FSImage" original="tag" replacement=".patches.tag" /> </configure> collective.monkeypatcherpanel (patches.zcml)

Patching resources (1/2) – overrides.zcml • Standard mechanism for overriding configuration settings introduced through a different package • overrides.zcml is an optional ZCML configuration file Products.PloneGlossary (configure.zcml) my.package (overrides.zcml) <configure..> <configure..> <browser:page <browser:page name="glossary_main_page“ name="glossary_main_page" for="Products.PloneGlossary.IPloneGlossary" for="Products.PloneGlossary.IPloneGlossary" class=".pages.GlossaryMainPage" class=".glossary.GlossaryView“ permission="zope2.View“ /> permission="zope2.View“ /> </configure> </configure>

Patching resources (2/2) – z3c.jbot • z3c.jbot allows you to override resources of other packages inside your own policy package • Limited to .pt, .cpt, .js?! Configuration: <browser:jbot directory=“overrides“ /> Existing template: plone.app.search/plone/app/search/search.pt Customization: your.package/your/package/overrides/plone.app.search.search.pt Links • http://blog.keul.it/2011/06/z3cjbot-magical-with-your-skins.html • http://pypi.python.org/pypi/z3c.jbot

Unconfigure resource configurations • Sometimes you just don‘t want or need ZCML configurations introduced by other packages • z3c.unconfigure is your friend some.package(configure.zcml) my.package (configure.zcml) <configure..> <configure..> <browser:page <include package="z3c.unconfigure" name="glossary_main_page“ file="meta.zcml" /> for="Products.PloneGlossary.IPloneGlossary" <unconfigure> class=".pages.GlossaryMainPage" <browser:page permission="zope2.View“ /> name="glossary_main_page“ </configure> for="Products.PloneGlossary.IPloneGlossary" class=".glossary.GlossaryView“ permission="zope2.View“ /> </unconfigure> </configure>

Extending schemas Plone comes with two content-type systems • Archetypes (old-style) – use archetypes.schemaextender – modify any AT-based content-type (modifying fields, adding fields) – SchemaExtender, SchemaModifier • Dexterity (new-style) – Dexterity introduces „behaviors“ – „A behavior is a re-usable aspect of an object that can be enabled or disabled without changing the component registry“ (Source: Dexterity developer manual)

Keep your designer happy Implementing CSS styles requires representative content http://localhost:8080/@@new-site?content=1

Auto-generated content

Predefined sample content • Write a browser view – creating a Plone site with policy package + add-ons – installing the basic site-structure – creating example content for each content-type, content- listing etc • use http://lorempixel.com/600/400 ... • look at loremipsum, collective.loremipsum or zopyx.ipsumplone

Predefined sample content • Throw your sandbox/Plone working site away as often as possible • sometimes I created 30-40 new Plone sites per day • Pragmatic side-effect – the content fixture code can be used as unit test where all your content-types and site-infrastructure is created and tested in one run – not the best solution but it works reasonably well

Some good hints • Never ever perform customizations in-place in existing 3rd-party packages. NEVER!!! • Customizations always belong into your own policy package. • Local customizations of 3rd-party package will be lost with the next version of customized package.

Questions?