Introduction
Zope is an open source web application framework. Zope has three
distinct audiences: users, developers, and administrators. This
guide is intended to document Zope for the second audience,
developers. If you are a user, or an administrator, or are looking
for documentation about either of those audiences, you should check
out The Zope Book or The
Zope Administrator's
Guide.
Throughout this guide, it is assumed that you know how to program
in the Python programming language. Most
of the examples in this book will be in Python. There are a number
of great resources and books for learning Python; the best online
resource is the Python.org web site and
many books can be found on the shelves of your local bookstore.
Zope is a large, mature framework that provides many services to web
application developers. This book describes these services from a
hands on, example-oriented standpoint. This book is not a complete
reference to the Zope API, but rather a practical guide to applying
Zope's services to develop and deploy your own web applications
built on Zope. This book covers the following topics:
- Components and Interfaces
- Zope is moving toward a
component-centric development model. This chapter describes the
new component model in Zope and how Zope components are described
through interfaces.
- Object Publishing
- Developing applications for Zope involves
more than just creating a component, that component must be
publishable on the web. This chapter describes publication, and
how your components need to be designed to be published.
- Zope Products
- New Zope components are distributed and installed
in packages called Products. This chapter explains Products in
detail.
- Persistent Components
- Zope provides a built-in, transparent
Python object database called ZODB. This chapter describes how to
create persistent components, and how they work in conjunction
with the ZODB.
- Acquisition
- Zope relies heavily on a dynamic technique called
acquisition. This chapter explores acquisition thoroughly.
- Security
- When your component is used by many different people
through the web, security becomes a big concern. This chapter
describes Zope's security API and how you can use it to make
security assertions about your object.
- Debugging and Testing
- Zope has built in debugging and testing
support. This chapter describes these facilities and how you can
debug and test your components.