Web Component Development with Zope 3

Book Description

Zope is a powerful Python web application platform for developing complex web applications rapidly and collaboratively. With version 3, Zope has been rebuilt on top of a Component Architecture that combines the best ideas available from modern web platforms.

This book focuses on Zope 3, though it also addresses the needs of Zope 2 developers who want to use Zope 3 features as they are backported into the Zope 2 platform. First, the key concepts of Zope and its Component Architecture are introduced. Each of Zope's capabilities is demonstrated by building a sample application and then extending it with more features.

Now in its second edition, the book has been overhauled completely. It has been adapted to the changes and new features in Zope 3 since its first release. The new edition also makes it easier to get started with Zope, incorporating input and suggestions from Zope 3 experts and newcomers alike.

Customer Reviews:

Web Component Development with Zope 3.......2007-09-06

The book seems to be well written, and pretty detailed in it's methods, But for me it is to advanced for what I was looking to get from the book.

Excelent material.......2007-04-08

Very good book about Zope3. Clear conceptual explanation of the tecnology and easy to understand examples. I'm very impressed with zope3.

Zope 3 Developer's Handbook, First Edition

Average customer rating:

Useful, but limited in scope and effectiveness
Excellent info, awkward editing
If you use Zope 3, have this book on your desk

Zope 3 Developer's Handbook, First Edition
Stephan Richter
Manufacturer: Sams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0672326175

Book Description

Be the first in line when the green flag for Zope 3 goes down with the help of the Zope Developer's Handbook. This collection of cookbook recipes provides easy-to-follow solutions to common problems you may face as a Zope or Python developer when beginning to implement the Zope 3 open-source application server. Utilize the book's solutions-oriented, task-based structure, as well as the supporting website for code used in each recipe, to help build your Zope components. Stay at the front of the line with the Zope Developer's Handbook.

Customer Reviews:

Useful, but limited in scope and effectiveness.......2006-02-03

I bought this book hoping it would be a good introduction to Zope 3. I browsed it in the bookstore and it seemed to include all necessary ingredients introduced in a sensible sequence.

The book is targeted at reasonably experienced developers, who know well the basic concepts of content publishing, and who've written Python code far beyond the "hello, world!" stage.

My main gripe with it, is that it assumes too much that the reader is familiar with the Zope 2 platform. As such, many terms were left unexplained, while others were presented only by comparison with their Zope 2 counterparts.

Subsequently, although this isn't exactly the fault of the author, the book was primarily written using a development version of Zope 3. In all fairness, the book was published shortly after the first final release of Zope 3, so it would have been impossible to meet the deadline of the publisher and have written it all using the final release. So, some things work, others don't without some tweaking.

The general structure of the book is sound. Some things could have been introduced at different places in the development stage. For instance, internationalisation is described extensively before the reader is presented anything about component development, which seems backwards to me. In general, however, the progression is fairly natural.

A typical chapter presents the scenario of the lesson, followed by an example, followed by the functional tests. The main problem is that there is little analysis, if any, about the principles of the system just introduced. Generalising from the examples in the book is very difficult for two reasons: they include the idiosyncrasies of the author, and other sources of documentation of Zope itself are too scarce and miserable to allow one to achieve a deeper understanding of the point of view of the author.

To put it shortly, the book presents the personal views of the author on Zope 3 development, with very few explanations of the logic behind them. Perhaps these reasons are obvious for a reader experienced with Zope 2. However, given the radical design differences between Zope 2 and Zope 3 (claimed on their site), I fail to see why I should first learn Zope 2, in order to easily understand this book.

The focus on functional tests is admirable, and many developers will, hopefully, learn from it. However, I believe it is misplaced in a book that suffers from the lack of explanations of the reasoning behind the author's opinion.

Ultimately, it is just some structured information about a product that doesn't have virtually any documentation aside of IRC logs and some functional tests, which are considered to be documentation by its developers. No matter how self-documenting their code might be (and it is!), the structure of such a complex system cannot be learnt only from reading the source code.

I asked myself if I would buy this book after, say, having borrowed it for a while from a library. I tend to say no.

If you needed to learn Zope 3 immediately, then buy it. It's probably the best book available on this topic at the time I'm writing this review. However, it is nowhere near good.

Excellent info, awkward editing.......2005-10-28

While the information is great, there could have been a lot more done in the editing process to clean up sentence and paragraph structure. In several instances the author will present multiple potential approaches to an issue but only cover one of the approaches.

If you use Zope 3, have this book on your desk.......2005-02-27

Having Stephan Richter's Zope 3 Developer's Handbook next to you while you work signals to everyone that a) you're using the world's most advanced web application platform and b) you're into serious productivity!

Zope 3 Developer's Handbook started its life as a series of "recipes" -- short, pithy how-tos that don't waste time with theory and get you straight into the code. Stephan has preserved this pattern to create an essential tutorial and reference that, well, reads like a book! (I.e. something you can hold in one hand, leaving your other hand free to sip your favorite beverage, slumped on the couch...you know, a book :-)

I'm a contributor to the Zope 3 project and have a fairly good idea of what I'm doing when it comes to using the platform. After getting Stephan's book, I was surprised at how much I didn't know! And this is coming from a book that is eminently approachable and easy to use. It's density of information sneaks up on you -- like, "wait a minute...I just coved a ton of ground...that was really easy."

Okay, some credit goes to the Zope 3 team, which assembled a remarkably straight forward platform for web application development. Nonetheless, Stephan shows a mastery for putting the pieces together to in way that's educational and easy to use.

One of the strengths of the book is that it's code-centric. If you're a Python developer you'll appreciate that code speaks louder than words. Stephan understands this and wrings as much instructive power from the code as any Python aficionado could expect.

If you're not a Python developer, don't dismay! You have a lot to look forward to in this book -- you not only get to learn about Zope 3, you get to see first hand why Python is the "Best Darned Programming Language on Earth" [tm]. (Disclaimer: not really trademarked ;-)

If you're not familiar with Zope but are interested in web application platforms (including the enterprise heavy weights J2EE and .NET), take a serious look at Zope 3 through Stephan's book. While Zope 3 is not a complex layer of heavy handed architectural frameworks (a lot of people think this is a mark of a good platform), it is extraordinarily capable at building world class apps. (I use the term "word class" in the rich tradition of PR prose...hackers, please disregard.)

I guess I'm endorsing the book. Darn...I wanted to write one of those hard hitting New York Times reviews that caused Stephan to reconsider his career as an author. Sadly for my career as a critic, I picked the wrong book to write about ;-)

So, anyone still on the fence by now should click "Add to Shopping Cart" anyway. At the very least, having Stephan's book on your desk will make you look extremely savvy and have your colleagues scratching their heads wondering if it's the new shirt or maybe if you've lost some weight.

Average customer rating:

Becoming dated, missing some key topics
Could be better
If you need to learn Zope, buy this book
A good intro to the leading open source Web CMS
Zope gets a glowing review; "The Zope Book" does not.

The Zope Book
Amos Latteier , and Michel Pelletier
Manufacturer: Sams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0735711372

Amazon.com

The Zope Book is an authoritative guide to Zope, an open-source Web application server. Zope goes beyond server-side scripting languages like PHP by providing a complete object framework, a built-in Web server, a Web-based management interface, and load-balancing through ZEO (Zope Enterprise Objects). That's a considerable punch, and Zope is attracting increasing interest from developers looking for an alternative to heavyweight commercial application servers. Zope is implemented in Python, an object-oriented scripting language, and runs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

Written by Zope developers, this title is concise and to the point. It is aimed at people new to Zope as well as current users, although some existing knowledge of Web technology is necessary. The book is organized into three parts. The first part is introductory, outlining how Zope works and explaining basic DTML (Document Template Markup Language), a tag-based language for server-side scripting. The second, and longest, part tackles users and security, scripting with Python or Perl, using Zope's built-in search engine, and connecting to relational databases. Part three covers scaling and extending Zope, with a short chapter on ZEO and information on creating your own custom Zope classes. Reference material is contained in two appendices, one for DTML and the other for the core Zope API.

The Zope Book offers an excellent, high-level view supplemented by more detail for the most common development tasks. The authors refer you to Zope's documentation or other resources for the most advanced or specialist topics. The result is ideal for evaluating Zope, and also useful for getting started with Zope projects. --Tim Anderson, amazon.co.uk

Book Description

The Zope Book, written by the experts who developed Zope, is a guide to building dynamic Web applications using Zope. Authors Amos Latteier and Michel Pelletier teach you how to utilize Zope to write Web pages, program Web scripts, use databases, manage dynamic content, perform collaborative Web development tasks, plus much more.Whether you are new to Zope or are a skilled user, this current and comprehensive reference is designed to introduce you to Zope and its uses and teaches you how it differs from other Web application servers. From installation and advanced features, such as ZClasses, to using Zope with relational databases, or scripting with Perl and Python, The Zope Book provides the instruction you need.

Customer Reviews:

Becoming dated, missing some key topics.......2004-04-06

Basic concepts are, I think, well presented. This is terribly important because even those of us who are used to working with web applications might find Zope very different from anything we've used before. This would earn it four stars except for one serious flaw: the book is rather dated. There is no coverage at all of Zope Page Templates or METAL, which are very important topics in today's Zope.

I reduced the rating to three stars because of essential deployment topics that I wanted to see covered that were also completely missing. SSL, the zope.conf file, using Zope in conjunction with Apache, for example. There's probably more, but I just don't know yet that I don't know them.

So I give it three stars for being useful, but having significant flaws. You are better off going to Zope.org and getting the latest on-line docs from there.

Could be better.......2002-09-30

I think a lot of the reviewers for this book are blinded by the fact that Zope is an incredibly cool and powerful technology, especially for the price.

By all means wax lyrical about the capabilities of the platform. Be thankful that it is finally becoming accepted, documented, and widely deployed. But please don't think that this book is great, just because it talks about Zope and is written by a couple of very well-respected zopistas.

I was quite disappointed by this work. It fails to deliver on the promise of teaching you how to build useful applications in Zope. It's 350 pages of "what Zope is" and about 34 pages of "how to use it to do something useful".

This is a common problem with most Zope documentation - the authors themselves get carried away with the technology and fail to point out how it might be usefully implemented. Yet sadly, the Zope community really, really needs a task-focused book like that.

As an introduction to what Zope is, though, this book's not too bad - even if it is a rewrite of online documentation. Hence three stars.

If you need to learn Zope, buy this book.......2002-02-12

If you need to learn Zope, buy this book. That said, if you're already working with Zope, don't bother. This is the official introduction to Zope, and for that, it's excellent. I've bought every book available on Zope, and this is by far the best introductory volume. But as soon as you need to get past the introduction, you'll need to get more information somewhere else. In part this is because Zope is such a quickly evolving platform that any printed material is inherently outdated before the ink can dry. I can't sing the praises of Zope loud enough, and this is THE book to get you started. Buy it, by all means. But be prepared to look for more once you've grasped the beginnings of what promises to be the greatest web application/CMS platform available.

A few words to respond to the detractors here:

- to "beyond the scope of this book" Darren: what the heck did you expect?! You want to use a product in advanced ways, then fault an introductory book for not giving you details on how to do it. I'm a Linux/Apache/Perl guy myself, but the very fact that you insist on talking about Zope in Perl-ish terms shows that you JUST DIDN'T GET IT! Zope is *way* more than just a Python replacement for what we already do. And don't bring the script language wars into this - we're talking about Zope and The Zope Book, not whether Python or Perl is better.

- to "glowing review for Zope" wpbarr: what I said to Darren about faulting an introductory volume for lacking advanced details goes double for you. Installing a Zope product may not have been mentioned, but I'll bet it was at least in part because it's so darn easy that it's not worth wasting print space on. You will *not* waste your saved development time figuring it out - the online and included docs are so clear that you'll learn it in about five minutes, if you trouble yourself to try. As for integrating Zope with existing infrastructure, I repeat: this is an *introductory* volume, not an advanced textbook.

Summary: Don't expect this book to be what it's not, and you'll find it's very much worthwhile. You can frustrate the heck outta' yourself trying to learn to write a sonnet from a "Dick And Jane" primer, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the primer. Ya gotta' start somewhere! ;-)

A good intro to the leading open source Web CMS.......2002-01-26

Although Zope may be the leading open source Web content management platform, it has suffered from a lack of comprehensive documentation. This book, and similar titles from Linux Journal Press and Sams, have begun to address this issue, hopefully bringing greater interest in the platform.

The Zope Book was written by Zope developers and is targeted at Web developers and admins who have some experience with Web applications but possibly not content management technology.

Part 1, Introducing Zope, is designed to get the reader started with Zope, explaining how to download, install, and configure the software using the platform's graphical interface. The section describes what Zope can do, explains the basics of the Zope content object model, and introduces Zope's server-side templating environment, Document Template Markup Language (DTML).

Part 2, Creating Web Applications with Zope, gets into the meat of actually making Zope applications. The section talks about scripting with Python and Perl, user security searching, connecting to a variety of relational databases, metadata, and advanced DTML.

Part 3, Developing Advanced Web Applications with Zope, covers the Zope Enterprise Objects model, scaling and extending Zope, and Zope classes.

Appendixes include DTML and Zope API references and a guide to Zope resources, including mailing lists and Web sites.

The Zope Book is not the ultimate Zope refernce, and isn't meant to be.

Zope gets a glowing review; "The Zope Book" does not........2001-12-21

Save your money, visit zope.org and read the online docs because they are no better organized than this book is.

First, you would expect a book to significantly supplement the online and bundled documentation. This one provides little more than a re-write. For example, the book reveals little more about Zope system administration than the basic "double click" install. As far as building from sources, I at least expected the configure options to be documented. I was disappointed.

If you want to install any of the extensions, external resources or products Zope brags about being available (to cut development time), you will apply that saved development time towards figuring out how to install and take advantage of those "time savers."

Second, the book seems to assume all you will ever need or have is Zope. For those of us with existing web servers and databases, this book provides little compelling material to either employ Zope or about integrating it with existing infrastructure.

There must be a better book for Zope ... and there is:

Book Description

New Zope 3 is a web applications server written in Python that allows developing complex web applications rapidly and collaboratively. Zope 3 is the successor to the successful version 2.

After an introduction to the key concepts of Zope, a sample application is built and extended subsequently. The book is targeted towards developers familiar with the web and web technologies. Special sections for Zope 2 developers cover the basic differences to the predecessor. The concepts of Zope 3 and its component architecture are explained thoroughly, continually accompanied by a demo application.

Customer Reviews:

Well written and connected.......2006-05-10

I bought this book as a Zope Newbie. I am past 7 chapters at this point and have been able to understand all the concepts presented and also conjured up a small example of my own, to which I am incrementally adding to. The book boasts of the following:

- Well presented chapters with incremental addition of newer concepts.
- Good coverage of Beginner, Intermediate as well as Advanced concepts.
- An application that has been developed incrementally throughout the book, chapter by chapter with downloadable source code.
- Concisely written while being an easy as well as entertaining read.
- The author actually responded to me when I posted a question on the Zope Users Mailing List (see zope.org).

Zope is paradigm change from existing app-server technologies and the author does a good job of helping the reader absorb this. My only beef with the book was that the application source code had some problems with the Zope 3.2 version but this really isn't that big of a deal since one can either simply run it on a previous version of Zope or else, if feeling adventurous, fix the problem.
Definitely Recommended.
-Sid.

strong localisation discussion.......2006-03-10

Perhaps the best known Zope application is Plone, for content management. Zope also has a thriving community centred around Zope.org. So perhaps you are interested in learning to program Zope?

This book is one of the most comprehensive descriptions of Zope, version 3. The author is German, and perhaps not being a native English speaker helps the content of this book. Example codes are given, not just for English speakers. Plus, there is a strong section on internationalisation or localisation. He explains how to do this, with practical cases like showing the same numbers in different ways. Continental Europe uses a comma for the decimal point and a dot for the thousands separator. Simple enough to handle. But also enough to hopefully make you aware of how to use Zope to customise for your expected audiences.

Perfection in technical writing.......2005-05-05

This book is at once thorough, brief, and concise. This is by far the best technical books i've read on any subject.

I have been interested in Zope for almost a year now, but even as a seasoned programmer I was intimidated by its labrythian complexity. I struggled for weeks reading the free Zope material and learning almost nothing. This book presents the material in an accessable manner while shying away from the horrible puns and awful jokes present in so many technical books. This book would be a bargin at twice its price.

Even the books physical construction is outstanding -- it is a hard back with a solid binding, and the cover appears to be some sort of tyvek which is an industrial material you may recognize as the nearly indestructable plastic the US Postal Service uses in some of its mailers. For the older among us, you would recall the material being used as 5.25" floppy sleeves.

A last note, another reviewer mentions having trouble getting the book in the US, I recieved it in about a week with the standard free shipping.

Excellent; too bad it's apparently hard to get in the States.......2005-04-16

This is the second book on Zope 3 to be published, and where Stephan Richter's book is designed to be more of a cookbook, this is a polished and impressive presentation of the Zope 3 software that will suit many better as a first text. The index leaves a bit to be desired, but it is otherwise an excellent effort.

Springer, the publisher, is a very well respected German publisher; it's really too bad for us Americans that the high price and slow delivery times for this book associated with overseas shipping may deter purchase: it should be a first choice for an introduction.

Average customer rating:

Nice Idea TERRIBLE Execution
Beautiful Graphics and Presentation
This book picks up where "The Zope Book" left off...
This book picks up where "The Zope Book" left off...
A comprehensive and "user friendly" introduction to Zope

The Book of Zope
Beehive
Manufacturer: No Starch Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1886411573

Book Description

Zope, the leading Open Source Web application server, helps teams of developers create and manage dynamic, Web-based business applications like Intranets and portals. Zope makes it easy to add features such as site search, news, personalization, and e-commerce. The Book of Zope is a comprehensive introduction to Zope, covering installation; DTML programming; concepts such as users, roles, and permissions; ZClasses; ZCatalog; databases; programming Zope with Python; debugging; and the use of external data sources. Zope runs on Windows and almost all Unix-based platforms, and includes its own Web server, transactional object-oriented database, search engine, Web page templating system, Web development and management tool, and comprehensive extension support.

Customer Reviews:

Nice Idea TERRIBLE Execution.......2003-01-16

Where are all these good reviews coming from? Did they read the book and try to follow the instructions and examples? I tried and couldn't.

Now I'm a tech savy person and own a large library of tech books, so normally I don't have a problem with even the most dense and poorly written tech guides. This one, however, has proved useless.

The most glaring problem, one that you will find on almost every other page is that their figures and diagrams don't match up with their text. Moreover, you'll often even find that the figure doesn't even match up with the text cited with figure. Very confusing! At present I'm equating learning Zope to learning unix - real test of understanding complexity; a poorly organized text makes this process more difficult.

So, what do you do? Well, don't buy this book. The 'Zope Book' is very good and downloadable in pdf format. Also, the Zope Bible, which I've just started is very good. For more advanced topics try the 'Zope Web Applications and Content Management'. Also, Zope comes with a very nifty tutorial.

Well, hope this helps. Don't make the same mistake i did in buying this book.

Beautiful Graphics and Presentation.......2003-01-04

The graphics and layout of this book make it a joy to read. I own several good Zope books but this is the first one I turn to when I need to look something up.

The information is organized logically and easy to find. There is a separate appendix in the back with a lot of the DTML and other Zope syntax listed in separate tables. For instance, last night I used it to look up the DTML string functions.

A great benefit is the separate chapter that provides an introduction to Python. I had also bought a separate Python book to help me get up and running with Zope, but I really didn't need one because this book gives you the basics that you need.

This book is really a joy. If you can only afford one book I even recommend this one instead of the The Zope Book.

This book picks up where "The Zope Book" left off..........2002-05-06

"The Zope Book" is the official documentation from Digital Creations (the makers of Zope). While an absolute necessity, it didn't cover everything I needed to get completely off the ground with Zope. This is the only Zope book I've found so far that fills in the gaps and did it in a way that was comprehensive and well-written. The other Zope books I've read felt "thrown together." This is an absolute must-have for any Zopista.

This book picks up where "The Zope Book" left off..........2002-05-06

A comprehensive and "user friendly" introduction to Zope.......2002-01-14

The Book Of Zope: How To Build And Deliver Web Applications, the contributing authors and specialists drawn from the Berlin and Washington D.C.-based Beehive organization have collaborated to produce a comprehensive and "user friendly" introduction to Zope, including its own Web server, transactional object-oriented database, search engine, web page template system, web development and management tool, and comprehensive extension support. Here laid out in a completely accessible text is everything needed for Open Source website developers using Zope for Windows and most Unix-based platforms. The Book Of Zope is strongly recommended to anyone seeking to learn how to install Zope on their system or server; develop their site and manage site content; use DTML to create dynamic content; manage users, roles, and permissions to secure their site and provide personalized content; integrate and publish data from relational databases; use ZCatalog to index and search their site contents; and extend Zope through Python products.

Average customer rating:

Better than The Zope Book but somewhat dated.
Give it a second chance, your patience will be rewarded
What is this????
Three strikes - it's out
Proofreaders Needed

Zope Web Application Construction Kit
Martina Brockmann , Sebastian Lühnsdorf , Mark Pratt , Katrin Kirchner , and Sebastian Luhnsdorf
Manufacturer: Sams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0672321335

Book Description

Zope is a powerful application server and content management system, but because it is an open-source technology there is a tremendous need for reliable, practical documentation showing developers how to leverage Zope to its fullest.Written by developers at Beehive Electronic Media Inc., one of the world's leading Zope consulting firms, Zope Web Application Construction Kit provides readers with a practical, straightforward guide -- along with all the needed software -- to setting up and developing powerful Web applications using Zope.

Customer Reviews:

Better than The Zope Book but somewhat dated........2004-04-27

Unfortunately this book is getting somewhat dated and if you don't have the inclination to check on the things it says or get involved with the on-line community you might find yourself rather out of date. Most of the core concepts of Zope are still somewhat the same. However the book does miss some areas but it is a good primer. It's, in my opinion any ways vastly better than The Zope Book which is very poorly written, unfriendly, confusing and all around not good. I recommend this book for people who already understand Python and have developed web applications in the past using other technologies. That's not to say this book isn't a good primer, it's still fairly good for that too. But expect to back up your reading with some IRC conversations in #Zope irc.freenode.net best of luck all you Zopers.

Give it a second chance, your patience will be rewarded.......2003-07-26

This book has had a slating from several reviewers, mainly due to the fact that the code supplied for Chapter 3 doesn't work as is - at least on current versions of Zope. I found that by removing the quotation marks from all the dtml-sqlvar variables it then worked perfectly, and the code from chapter 4 had no issues at all.

Other than that, this is a fine introduction to many aspects of Zope and well-known Zope products, though perhaps becoming a little outdated now (summer 2003) with the advent of Plone and the imminent(ish) release of Zope 3. There are some typos, and the book is written in a charming European English: these shouldn't cause you any real problems.

What is this????.......2003-01-14

I'm a newbie to this Zope, and would really like to see some working examples of this product, so I can at least compare what is correct to what is in this book. None of the examples I've come across so far work! What's worse; I cannot figure out what's wrong with them because I DO NOT KNOW ZOPE YET! I bought this for $., and I guess for examples, its ok. But man, if you want to come across as an authority in something, it wouild be helpful to make your books' examples workable.

Three strikes - it's out.......2002-10-14

I have shelved this book at least three times in disgust and frustration. Each time I pull it from the shelf, I think: "There must be SOMETHING useful in there". Hours later, I re-shelve it again, wondering why I don't just throw this amazingly content-free book away. All the other comments about typos etc. are absolutely true. This book takes a confusing subject, adds 500-odd pages to it, and does absolutely nothing but leave the reader at the starting point, wishing for the hours of his/her life back.

Proofreaders Needed.......2002-07-14

I have just retured from a trip to the dumpster; after tearing my hair out for two hours over the example in Chapter 3, I have rediscovered why I rarely trust books from this publisher. The example, as written, does not work, and the publisher has not offered any sort of errata for this book. If anyone would like a free copy of this book, go comb the Rockland landfill.

Book Description

This comprehensive Bible for Web Developers, Web Architects, and Content Managers covers everything you need to build Web sites with Zope, the leading Open Source Web application platform.

Customer Reviews:

You Need to Learn the Python Stuff!.......2002-07-21

The Zope Bible took me where I needed to go in learning Zope. While the Zope Book was quite excellent on the use of Zope and the Zope Management Interface (ZMI) for doing work, it was far, far too thin on the scripting and programming front.

The Book of Zope had very little I found useful.

I bought the Zope Bible after looking it over in them bookstore for about a half-hour. It is not for Zope newbies, for sure (though a particularly hardy newbie could probably grok it OK). But if you've done some Zope work and you find yourself hemmed in by the fences of the ZMI and hampered by a lack of ability to understand how the Zope objects interact with one another and with the outside world, this book is exactly right. It has answered more than a dozen questions I had that I had asked on the Zope mailing list to no avail.

The book is clear, well-written, cleanly organized and quite complete.

I agree it's probably not worthy of the monikder "Bible" but it is easily the most comprehensive book on Python devleopment in and for Zope that you'll find. And, believe me, you need to learn Python to make most effective use of Zope for anything beyond toy apps. Zope's ZClasses are a fragile gossamer. The real power is in the Python programmability of the thing.

Not a book to help you get started.......2002-07-10

Having a little experience of python, but none using zope, I purchased this book because of the other reviews I read here.
The first few chapters are very good and have helped me 'sell' zope to management because they describe why zope is such a good applications environment.
However, when it came to helping build applications, unless you want to build products, then this book contains almost nothing on scripting or using external methods (and hence the python functions outside the safety of zope). There is just a few pages on zope methods and only a 'hello' world on using external methods.
I was hoping to get a zope based application up and running fairly quickly to convince my colleagues that we can use zope effectivley, and for that I needed to access existing application (and hence external data using external methods).
I don't doubt that once you become experienced this book serves as a good reference book and a good guide for advancing to more sophisticated applications, but for an inexperienced zope applications developer it is not at all helpful.

This is the Zope Book I Was Looking For.......2002-07-04

I have a fair amount of experience in Python, but I had not yet had time to really get into Zope despite being intrigued by it for some time. When the opportunity presented itself to do some work with Zope, I jumped at the chance... only to find myself somewhat lost in a thicket of new concepts and vocabulary.

After initially trying with "The Zope Book" and "Zope Web Application Development and Content Management," I could create simple applications with dtml and pythonscripts, but I still felt like I wasn't really grokking Zope: I felt that the things which I created were not terribly scalable or portable. There is an extensive section on ZPatterns in the end of "Web Application Dev," but I gave that a pass when I found that ZPatterns are not supported in the current Zope releases.

This book was exactly what I needed to get past that wall: The section on application development in Python allowed me to leverage my existing knowledge to create some products that have now gone into full production use. I now feel much more confident building, extending, and integrating Zope apps.

This book is well written; It answered the questions that I came up with almost as soon as I came up with them, making it an easy read. The code listings were helpful without being prohibitively long. The book doesn't coddle the reader with excessive detail on simple topics, but gives just enough to understand. I loaned this book to a friend who only knows Perl and C, and he found the included Python intro enough to bring him up to speed on Python as well as Zope.

All that said, there is no substitute for actually sitting down with Zope and playing with it. This book will not make you an expert on the complete system, but it will make Zope transparent enough that you can continue your education on your own.

Chapters 6-10 are worth the cover price.......2002-06-06

If you want to do Python Products in Zope, you need this book.

The nice thing about Zope is that it's written in Python, but it's hard to find your way through the thicket of web modules to the elegant programmming language underneath.

Zope Bible contains the best step-by-step howto I have found for putting your application logic into Python classes (where it belongs) and then wrapping it up in the Zope persistence and display machinery.

The rest of the book consists of good clear explanations of the essential Zope components, including an excellent discussion of connecting to SQL databases.

Straddles a difficult audience.......2002-05-29

If you don't own any Zope books, get this one and forget the rest.

I had high hopes for this book and they were almost met. I've been a PHP, Perl, Python and ASP developer for a number of years and I continue to be excited by the promise of Zope. I know it's a brilliant tool but, time after time, the documentation lets it down. So you'd think that there would be a number of great Zope books to fill the information void.

Not a chance!

Zope books are like Internet books were in the mid 90's. There's so much fat and so little meat for professional developers and you feel like they've been rushed out the door to meet some arbitrary deadline. Trying to get a decent Zope Product tutorial with a good explanation of how and why was almost impossible until this book came along.

Book Description

To the end user a Zope website appears to be powered by just another web server, as it undoubtedly should. However, web developers need to be aware of some basic principles in order to take the best advantage of Zope¿s special abilities. They also need to be able to develop applications that are effective in gaining intimate familiarity and subtle details of coding practices unique to Zope.

In Zope: Web Application Development and Content Management, emphasis is placed on effectively using Zope at the earliest possible point and then quickly learning to use Zope itself as a powerful toolkit to continue developing the website. Detailed explanations are included to assure that the reader can readily understand the critical role of objects as the building blocks to Zope.

In the final chapters special attention is paid to vital concerns of a sophisticated production environment. Zope is a full-featured environment, quite capable of supporting genuine state of the art commercial websites, but not without diligent application of competent knowledge. The needs of mission critical users are covered in detail.

Customer Reviews:

Outdated and Incoherent.......2002-08-31

This book is both outdated (it discusses extensively Zope extensions that are no longer supported) and incoherent (it is
just a collection of unrelated example projects only loosely
tied together by the common theme of managing some content on a
web site). You're better off with the Zope Bible (for Zope) and the Content Management Bible (for CM issues generally). However,
there are a few useful things in it so if you can get it for
$5-10 as a remaindered book, go for it.

A jumble of disconnected stuff..........2002-08-12

This book tries to cover slightly different ground than "how to start using Zope to develop web sites." If you're looking for a good general introduction to Zope, I'd look at either Beehive's The Book of Zope, or the Zope Book (the online edition at zope.org; the printed version is quite out-of-date).

This book is basically a walkthrough of several products for Zope (the CMF, ZPatterns, ZUBB, etc.) I doubt you'll find that you've learned much about how to use Zope or how to develop for it, rather than a thin bit about how to apply these products.

I also found that this book felt rather hastily put-together, without much continuity between chapters.

The only reason I'd recommend this book is if you're looking to learn about ZPatterns, and chances are, you aren't.

Good starter for people looking towards Zope Zen........2002-03-17

First there are lots of code snippets right in the text,
which makes it rather easy to follow things when you don't
have a Zope box next to you. Sometimes they are a bit too
in-depth (like the listing of the SQLLevers in the ZPatterns
example) but most time they are selected wisely.

I found a lot of different topics explained (from Zope
for Newbiews, CMS, lots of 3rd Party Products, System Administration,
ZEO) which all bring enough knowledge to you, to start working with
them right after reading. (Or after downloading from the online
website that comes with the book.)

The Chapter (actually there are 3) about ZPatterns is actually
the most important to me, because it helped me understanding
this complex topic in a couple of days.

This book is a big must-read for all people trying to gain "Zope-Zen"!

Better than the rest - but lots of bad syntax.......2002-03-11

I've got copies of the Zope Book and Zope Web Construction Kit and this book is better than the other two, but you really have to reference the website... for updates and errata for the source code.

That said - the examples in the book are short and clear and the authors _do_ seem to update the site and reply to emails when errors are found.

This is the _only_ Zope book I'd recommend.

almost the kitchen sink.......2002-02-23

This is a good intro to Zope. If you have a free weekend and want to get to know Zope, this would be a very fine way to do it. Zope is amazingly expandable, and that is one of the things that this book points out & demonstrates with several helpful examples. I was amazed at how much the authors were able to pack into the book & pleased with the way they used products to demonstrate important features of Zope.

Because Zope is so expandable and versatile, however, they had to leave some things out. A topic that could have used a little more coverage (or maybe a lot, maybe a seperate book?) is database integration. It's a big topic, though, so I guess it makes sense that it isn't fully fleshed out.

Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone who (like me) is still getting to know Zope. It's very clearly written and well laid out. Kudos to the authors and publisher.

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