Creating new content types using Dexterity for Plone 4 on OS X

update: These steps should work with little adjustment on a Linux base OS also.

This is a short write-up that helps you to quickly jump to the "important" section of the dexterity manual (http://plone.org/products/dexterity/documentation/manual/developer-manual/schema-driven-types/referencemanual-all-pages). Hopefully this will minimize some of the fumbling on OS X (and Linux also). I provide some boiler plate code that should help you to skip some of the initial coding and hopefully save you some trivial errors.

I'm assuming that you already have dexterity configured to work with your Plone 4 instance, if you don't go and read Get Started with Dexterity Development for Plone 4 on OS X. I also assume that you have a working version of git, so ensure that you have a working installation of git.

Back already? Great!

Through the Web (TTW) Content Types (Warm up exercise)

This exercise will help you to appreciate some of the principles associated with dexterity based content types in Plone.

Start your Plone instance

Then go to 'admin' → 'Site Setup' → 'Add-ons', check 'Dexterity content types' and click 'Activate'.

Now go back to "Site Setup", select "Dexterity Content Types" and start tinkering with it.

Then create a new content type called 'Person'. You can do this by clicking 'add new content type' (see the screencast below):

That's it.

Creating a content type with filesystem code

Now that you've seen the through the web (TTW) approach, let's look at storing code on the filesystem. The filesystem based approach is better for version management (e.g. with git) and redistribution of the code.

To make your life easier, I've created some boilerplate code based on the dexterity manual. The instructions below will get you started quickly (assuming you already have Plone and git installed).

Step 1 - Get the example configuration file:

Get the 'example.conference.cfg' from here and place it in the same folder that contains your buildout.cfg.

Step 2 - Update buildout.cfg to use the new configuraiton file:

The changes will look something like this;

extends =

base.cfg

versions.cfg

http://good-py.appspot.com/release/dexterity/1.0-next?plone=4.0.5

example.conference.cfg

eggs =

Plone

PIL==1.1.6

plone.app.dexterity

example.conference

The re-run buildout:

bin/buildout

Step 3 - Customize the example.conference product with new content types

note: This is based on the section of the dexterity manual that discusses schema driven types.

Add 3 new files to src/example.conference/example/conference, presenter.py, program.py, and session.py.

see: http://plone.org/products/dexterity/documentation/manual/developer-manual/schema-driven-types/referencemanual-all-pages, for an explanation and the code to add to each.

Step 4 - Register the new content types as Factory Types

see: http://plone.org/products/dexterity/documentation/manual/developer-manual/schema-driven-types/referencemanual-all-pages, for instructions on doing this.

Once you've done this you should now be able to install the conference management system and add new programs, sessions and presenters, to your Plone site.

Plone 4 makes upgrades fast and easy

You probably know that Plone 4 is really fast. Here's a screencast of us upgrading our site from Plone 4.0rc1 to Plone 4.0.

As you see, not only is it very responsive, it's also pretty easy. I have done a few, less trivial upgrades from Plone 3 to Plone 4, hopefully I'll remember to do a screencast about that in the future.

Notes on setting up plone.app.themeeditor on Plone 4

I used a fresh install of the latest Plone4b4 then added the following to my buildout:
(Note the use of plone.app.jquerytools 1.1b5 since plone4b4 doesn't use that version. also there's a note below on getting the 'test-plone-4.x.cfg' file.)

[buildout]

...

extends =

...

test-plone-4.x.cfg

extensions = mr.developer
sources = sources
auto-checkout = plone.app.themeeditor
...
[sources]
plone.app.themeeditor = svn https://svn.plone.org/svn/plone/plone.app.themeeditor/trunk

[versions]
plone.app.jquerytools = 1.1b5
...

In the buildout directory get the testing .cfg file:

wget http://svn.plone.org/svn/plone/plone.app.themeeditor/trunk/test-plone-4.x.cfg

Then run buildout

bin/buildout

Fun integration testing

As an aside: You need to try the windmill testing (mentioned in David Glick's blog).

Use this command:

bin/test -s plone.app.themeeditor -f test_integration

here's the expected behaviour:

Also read the blog post and watch the other video that introduces the themeeditor, in the meantime I'm back on the project.

The Plone Visual Training Project Idea

I'd like to see a Plone visual training series, released under a CC style license.

The idea is to have a series of 1 to 5 minute screencasts professionally produced. These screencasts would make up a complete "track/series" for example the "Plone Theming Series" or the "Plone Developer Fundamentals Series" or "Administering Plone".

How would it be funded?
We'd need to determine the real production cost and pay someone to develop the screencasts. The funding would come from donations from the community.

How would it be done?

• Screencast sprints to develop script outlines
• One or two individuals to "flesh out" the scripts and storyboards.
• Professional implementation for the screencasts themselves
• Voicing by professionals, possibly comissioned via voices.com or a similar service
  

Usually I sit on my ponderings for a much longer period. I try to refine them and then, when I think they are well formed, I articulate the near complete idea.

This time I think it is worth following the "release early, release often" approach.

We already have the medium for deploying the content in Plone.tv.