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 ; [quick answers to common problems

In Detail 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. Get solutions to easily create and manage Plone add-on products to make your site better, smarter, more usable, and more secure along with a brief explanation of common use cases Approach The examples in this book follow a sample project creating a digital newspaper website to meet the requirements of a fictional customer who wants to place commercial advertisements all over the site. The whole book is a comprehensive collection of recipes that elaborate a series of well known use cases. You will find an organized step-by-step procedure to accomplish each task followed by detailed explanations to better understand how and why each topic was undertaken, and many links to online references and other related sections in the book that can supplement the subject in question. You can read the whole book or just pick the recipes that are relevant for you; where necessary, cross references will help you understand the recipes even if you do not read them in sequential order. Who this book is for This book is for programmers who have some knowledge of Python, Plone, and Zope. If you want to develop feature-rich add-on products in Plone, this book is for you. It is aimed at the development of backend features, so you need not have other web-related skills such as HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. 70 simple but incredibly effective recipes for creating your own feature rich, modern Plone add-on products by diving into its development frameworkKey FeaturesCreate custom content types, add utilities, and internationalize your applications using Plone productsManage site installation, configuration, and customization with code instead of manual actions that are likely to be forgottenGuarantee your code operation and performance by including automatic testing and caching techniquesPart of Packt's Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible.Book DescriptionThe 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 learnSet up a news website with many banners hosted in OpenX and get to know about all the tools you must have before starting any projectEasily detect and debug existing errors in the code by installing some special tools such as IPython, ipdb, and PDBDebugMode among othersCreate a new content type (based on an existing one) using ArchGenXML and wrap the final product into a Python eggCreate a new content type from scratch automatically using pasterComplement your content types by placing related information in new portlets and manage these portletsImprove the performance of your product by creating lightweight content types and taking advantage of other features of PloneSecure some task Cover Copyright Credits About the Authors About the Reviewers Table of Contents Preface Chapter 1: Getting Started Introduction Installing Python on Linux Installing Plone on Linux Installing Plone on Windows Checking out code from a version control system Creating a Plone site Chapter 2 : Using Development Tools Introduction Accessing an IPython powered shell Taking advantage of an enhanced interac tive Python debugger with ipdb Discovering Zope/Plone APIs and docstrings with DocFinderTab Opening an online Python shell on Plone using Clouseau Debugging Zope exceptions with PDBDebug Mode Applying code changes on-the-fly using plone.reload Chapter 3 : Creating Content Types with ArchGenXML Introduction Installing ArchGenXML Configuring ArgoUML Creating a model Generating code Customizing generated code Installing the product Automatically installing products in your Zope instance Chapter 4 : Prevent Bugs through Testing Introduction Working with paster-generated test suites Creating a test suite with ArchGenXML Creating doctests with iPython Zope functional testing Using Selenium functional tests Chapter 5 : Creating a Custom Content Type with Paster Introduction Creating an Archetypes product with paster Adding a content type into a product Changing the base class in paster content types Adding fields to a content type Adding a custom validator to a content type Modifying the view of a content type with jQuery Chapter 6: Creating Lightweight Content Types Introduction Creating a product package structure Creating a folderish content type Creating the user interface for Zope 3 content types Creating content types with Dexterity Chapter 7: Improving Product Performance Introduction Installing CacheFu with a policy product Improving performance by tweaking expensive code Testing server load and benchmarking our code Chapter 8 : Internationalization Introduction Adding i18ndude support to ArchGenXML Installing i18ndude standalone Using i18ndude Using Placeless Translation Services for i18n support Using zope.i18n approach Overriding others' translations Using i18n with ArchGenXML Using i18n with paster-created products Adding i18n support to any product Translating content Setting language options Chapter 9 : Adding Security to your Products Introduction Creating a new permission Adding a new role Adding user groups Testing security customizations Protecting operations with permissions Managing security with workflows Adding configuration options in Plone control panel Chapter 10 : Improving User Interface with KSS Introduction Preparing a form to take full advantage of KSS Changing end user pages with client-side KSS Submitting data via AJAX Chapter 11 : Creating Portlets Introduction Creating a portlet package Customizing a new portlet according to our requirements Testing portlets Assigning portlets automatically Chapter 12 : Extending Third-Party Products Introduction Using skin layers Overriding Zope 3 components Customizing Zope 3 browser templates and files Subscribing to others' events Using the ZCA to extend a third-party product: Collage Chapter 13 : Interacting with other Systems: XML-RPC Introduction Creating a configuration form Registering a local utility Registering a global utility Chapter 14 : Getting our Products ready for Production Introduction Installing and configuring an egg repository Submitting products to an egg repository Writing a production buildout Appendix: Creating a Policy Product Creating a policy product Index Annotation 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. Get solutions to easily create and manage Plone add-on products to make your site better, smarter, more usable, and more secure along with a brief explanation of common use cases