Zope Toolkit 1.0.8¶

This document covers major changes in this release that can lead to backward-incompatibilities and explains what to look out for when updating.

Introduction¶

The Zope Toolkit 1.0 release is the first release of the Zope Toolkit. The Zope Toolkit really is just a collection of libraries managed together by the Zope developers. We typically treat each library independently, so you would like to look at the CHANGES.txt in each library for updates. Here we note larger changes, especially ones that affect multiple libraries.

Installation¶

The Zope Toolkit cannot be installed directly except as individual libraries (such as zope.component). To install it you typically would install a framework or application that makes use of these libraries. Examples of such projects are BlueBream, Grok and Zope 2.

If you want to use the Zope Toolkit KGS, you can use the buildout extends mechanism (replace 1.0 by the desired version):

[buildout]
extends = http://download.zope.org/zopetoolkit/index/1.0/ztk-versions.cfg

You can also copy the file locally or additionally extend the zopeapp-versions.cfg file from the same location.

Frameworks and applications have their own set of install instructions. You should follow these in most cases.

Python versions¶

The ZTK 1.0 release series supports Python 2.4 up to Python 2.6. Neither Python 2.7 nor any Python 3.x series is supported.

News¶

The 1.0 release of the Zope Toolkit contains a number of refactorings that are aimed to clean up dependencies between pieces of code. Many packages in zope.app have had their code moved to existing or newly created packages in the zope namespace. These new packages do generally not contain user interface code (typically what’s in .browser), and have much clearer dependency relationships as a result.

Backwards compatibility imports have been left in place so that your existing code should still work. In some cases you will have to explicitly add dependencies to a zope.app. to your code, as due to the cleanup they might not come in automatically anymore due to indirect dependencies; if you see an import error this is probably the case.

We recommend you update your existing code to import from the new packages if possible. The transition support and zope.app.* support is limited: the legacy support will be officially retired from the ZTK in subsequent releases.

Migration issues¶

zope.app.keyreference -> zope.keyreference¶

This package was renamed to zope.keyreference and all its functionality was moved to the new one. The new package contains a little workaround for making old persistent keyreferences loadable without zope.app.keyreference installed, so the latter one is not needed at all anymore. Still review your code for any imports coming from zope.app.keyreference and modify it to use zope.keyreference instead.

zope.app.intid -> zope.intid¶

The non-UI functionality of these packages was moved to zope.intid with backwards compatibility imports left in place. Review your imports from zope.app.intid to see whether they cannot come directly from zope.intid instead.

zope.app.catalog -> zope.catalog¶

The non-UI functionality of these packages was moved to zope.catalog. Review your imports from zope.app.catalog to see whether they cannot come directly from zope.catalog instead.

zope.app.container -> zope.container¶

The non-UI functionality of these packages was moved to zope.container. Review your imports from zope.app.container to see whether they cannot come directly from zope.container instead.

In addition, the exceptions used by zope.container were changed, so if your code catches them, you need to review it:

The DuplicationError in setitem was changed to KeyError.
The UserError in NameChooser was changed to ValueError.

zope.app.component -> zope.security, zope.site¶

The implementation of the <class> ZCML directive moved from this package to zope.security. Packages that relied on zope.app.component to obtain this directive should declare a direct dependency on zope.security, and it may be possible to lose the dependency on zope.app.component altogether.

Non-UI site related functionality has been moved to the zope.site package. with backwards compatibility imports left in place. Review your imports from zope.app.component to see whether they cannot come directly from zope.site instead.

zope.app.folder -> zope.site, zope.container¶

The implementation of the zope.app.folder.Folder class has moved to zope.site.folder instead, with backwards compatibility imports left in place. Review your imports from zope.app.folder to see whether they cannot come directly from zope.site instead. In addition, Folder is an IContainer implementation that also mixes in site management functionality. If such site management support is not necessary, in some cases your code does not need Folder but may be able to rely on a Container implementation from zope.container instead.

A base class with the implementation of the container-like behavior of Folder has moved to zope.container (and zope.site uses this for its implementation of Folder). This is not normally something you should need to retain backwards compatibility.

zc.copy -> zope.copy, zope.copypastemove, zope.location¶

The pluggable object copying mechanism once developed in the zc.copy package was merged back into zope.location, zope.copypastemove and the new zope.copy package. The zope.copy package now provides a pluggable mechanism for copying objects from zc.copy and doesn’t depend on anything but zope.interface. The zope.copypastemove uses the copy function from zope.copy in its ObjectCopier.

The zope.location now provides an ICopyHook adapter that implements conditional copy functionality based on object locations, that old zope.location.pickling.CopyPersistent used to provide. Note, that if you don’t use ZCML configuration of zope.location, you may need to register zope.location.pickling.LocationCopyHook yourself.

The zope.location.pickling.locationCopy and zope.location.pickling.CopyPersistent are now deprecated in favor of zope.copy and were replaced by backward-compatibility imports. See zope.copy package documentation for information on how to use the new mechanism.

The new version of the zc.copy package now only contains backward-compatibility imports and is deprecated. zope.copy should be preferred for new developments.

zope.app.security refactoring¶

The zope.app.security package was finally refactored into a few small parts with less dependencies and more clear purpose.

The implementation of the <module> ZCML directive moved from this package to zope.security. Packages that relied on zope.app.security to obtain this directive should declare a direct dependency on zope.security, and it may be possible to lose the dependency on zope.app.security altogether.

The protectclass module in this package has moved to zope.security, with backwards compatibility imports left in place. Review your imports from zope.app.security to see whether they cannot come directly from zope.security instead.

All interfaces (IAuthentication, IUnauthenticatedPrincipal, ILoginPassword and so on.) were moved into a new zope.authentication package, as well as several utility things, like PrincipalSource and checkPrincipal function. The new package has much less dependencies and defines an abstract contract for implementing authentication policies. While backward compatibility imports are left in place, it’s strongly recommended to update your imports to the zope.authentication.

The global principal registry and its ZCML directives are moved into a new zope.principalregistry package with backward-compatibility imports left in place. If your application uses global principals, review your code and ZCML configuration to update it to the new place.

The local permission functionality was moved into a new zope.app.localpermission package. This functionality is a part of Through-The-Web development pattern that seems not to be used and supported much by Zope Toolkit and Application anymore, so it can be considered deprecated. However, it can serve as a great example of TTW-related component.

The Permission vocabularies and standard protections for Message objects and __name__, __parent__ attributes as well as some common permissions, like zope.View and zope.ManageContent were merged into zope.security.

The adapters from zope.publisher’s IHTTPCredentials and IFTPCredentials to the ILoginPassword were moved into zope.publisher, thus making zope.authentication a dependency for zope.publisher.

The original zope.app.security package now only contains several deprecated or application-specific permission definitions, python module protections, that are only likely to be needed with deprecated Through-The-Web development pattern, and ZMI-related browser views (login.html, zope.app.form view for PrincipalSource and so on), as well as backward-compatibility imports. So, if you’re not using TTW and/or standard ZMI browser views, you probably should review update your imports to a new places and drop dependency on zope.app.security to reduce package dependencies count.

Other packages, that used zope.app.security, like zope.securitypolicy are either already adapted to the changes or will be adapted soon.

zope.app.publisher refactoring¶

The zope.app.publisher package was also refactored into smaller parts with less dependencies and clearer purpose.

The browser resources mechanism (mostly used for serving static files and directories) was factored out to the new zope.browserresource package. It was also made more pluggable, so you can register specific resource classes for some file extensions, if you need special processing. One of the example is the new zope.ptresource package, where the PageTemplateResource was moved, another example is z3c.zrtresource package that was adapted to automatically use ZRT resource class for files with .zrt extensions.

Browser menu mechanism was moved into a new zope.browsermenu package with no further changes.

ZCML directives for easy creation of browser views (the browser:page directive and friends) was moved into a new small package, zope.browserpage. Also, the directives don’t depend the menu mechanism now and will simply ignore “menu” and “title” arguments if zope.browsermenu package is not installed.

The IModifiableBrowserLanguages adapter was moved into zope.publisher along with several ZCML security declarations for zope.publisher classes that used to be in zope.app.publisher.

ZCML registrations for IXMLRPCPublisher adapter for containers was moved into the zope.container, because the actual adapters code were already in zope.container and registered there as IBrowserPublisher adapters. However, both adapters and their ZCML registrations will probably move elsewhere when we’ll be refactoring zope.container.

Several parts are left in zope.app.publisher untouched:

Browser Skins vocabulary.

date field converter for zope.publisher’s form values conversion mechanism.

ManagementViewSelector browser view (ZMI-related part).

xmlrpc:view directive for publishing XML-RPC methods.

The latter, xmlrpc:view directive is generally useful, so it may be moved into a separate package in future, however there are no clear decision about how to move XML-RPC and FTP-related things currently.

Password managers extracted from zope.app.authentication¶

The IPasswordManager interface and its implementations were extracted from zope.app.authentication into a new zope.password package to make them usable with other authentication systems, like z3c.authenticator or zope.principalregistry or any custom one.

It basically depends only on zope.interface, so it can be really useful even in non-Zope environments, like Pylons, for example.

The Password Manager Names vocabulary is also moved into zope.password, however, it’s only useful with zope.schema and zope.component, so you need them installed to work with them. They’re listed in the “vocabulary” extra requirement specification.

ZODB 3.9 FileStorage native blob support¶

The FileStorage component of ZODB 3.9 used in Zope Toolkit 1.0 now supports blobs natively, so you don’t need to use BlobStorage proxy for it anymore.

Thus, you can specify blob directory directly to FileStorage. If you use ZConfig, that means something like this:

<filestorage>
  path var/Data.fs
  blob-dir var/blobs
</filestorage>

instead of:

<blobstorage>
  blob-dir var/blobs
  <filestorage>
    path var/Data.fs
  </filestorage>
</blobstorage>

If you creating a storage from python, that means something like this:

storage = FileStorage('var/Data.fs', blob_dir='var/blobs')