Tag Archives: script

Passing dynamic settings to Javascript in Plone

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1

Here is described a way to pass data from site or context object to a Javascripts easily. For each page, we create a <script> section which will include all the options in a Javascript filled in by Python code. The object is automatically created from a Python dict using JSON library.

We create the script tag in <head> section using a Grok viewlet registered there.

viewlet.py:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""

    Viewlets related to application logic.

"""

# Python imports
import json

# Zope imports
from Acquisition import aq_inner
from zope.interface import Interface
from five import grok
from zope.component import getMultiAdapter

# Plone imports
from plone.app.layout.viewlets.interfaces import IHtmlHead

# The viewlets in this file are rendered on every content item type
grok.context(Interface)

# Use templates directory to search for templates.
grok.templatedir('templates')

# The generated HTML snippet going to <head>
TEMPLATE = u"""
<script type="text/javascript">
    var %(name)s = %(json)s;
</script>
"""

class JavascriptSettingsSnippet(grok.Viewlet):
    """ Include dynamic Javascript code in <head>.

    Include some code in <head> section which initializes
    Javascript variables. Later this code can be used
    by various scripts.

    Useful for settings.
    """

    grok.viewletmanager(IHtmlHead)

    def getSettings(self):
        """
        @return: Python dictionary of settings
        """

        context = aq_inner(self.context)
        portal_state = getMultiAdapter((context, self.request), name=u'plone_portal_state')

        return {
            # Pass dynamically allocated site URL to the Javascripts (virtual host monster thing)
            "staticMediaURL" : portal_state.portal_url() + "/++resource++yourcompany.app",
            # Some other example parameters
            "schoolId" : 3,
            "restService" : "http://yourserver.com:8080/rest"
        }

    def render(self):
        """
        Render the settings as inline Javascript object in HTML <head>
        """
        settings = self.getSettings()
        json_snippet = json.dumps(settings)

        # Use Python string template facility to produce the code
        html = TEMPLATE % { "name" : "youroptions", "json" : json_snippet }

        return html

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Integrating jQuery UI 1.8 with Plone 4

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We had some problems integrating jQuery UI to Plone 4.

Looks like jQuery UI wants to define jQuery.tabs() and Plone 4 wants to do this also (form_tabbing.js).  After loading jQuery UI, Edit page tabs stopped working.

The solution is to build a custom jQuery UI download bundle without Tabs feature includes. Then you should be able to simple drop jQuery UI to any page:

 <metal:head define-macro="javascript_head">    
 <link rel="stylesheet" tal:attributes="href string:${context/portal_url}/jquery-ui-1.8.9.custom/css/ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.8.9.custom.css" type="text/css" />
 <script type="text/javascript" tal:attributes="src string:${context/portal_url}/jquery-ui-1.8.9.custom/js/jquery-ui-1.8.9.custom.min.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="yourjqueryuiscript.js"></script>
 </metal:head>

Maybe jQuery object is the next battlefield of namespace conflicts…

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Automatically generating description based on body text

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Below is a sample script to automatically generate descriptions based on page body text. It is for Plone CMS, but should be applicable to any Python based CMS with some modifications.

The idea is that we take three first sentences and use them as a description.

Use case: People are lazy to write descriptions (descriptions as in Dublin Core metadata). You can generate some kind of description by taking the few first sentences of the text. This is not perfect, but this is way better than empty description. Also, the script comes with good comments which should be helpful for beginner Plone programmers.
Please comment if you have other simple ideas to generate descriptions.
Usage
  • Add  Script (Python) item through Zope Management interface to any Plone folder
  • Put in the code payload below
  • Hit Test tab or type in Script URL manually – note that the operation is one shot only
  • The script iterates through all content items in that folder
  • The script will provide logging output to standard Plone log (var/log and stdout if Plone is run in the debug mode).

Since Zope uses RestrictedPython for through-the-web created scripts, the user of this script cannot breach the server security (they cannot make Python calls they have no permission for). This sets some limitations for automating tasks like this, but we don’t hit those limitations in our use case.

def create_automatic_description(content, text_field_name="text"):
    """ Creates an automatic description from HTML body by taking three first sentences. 

    Takes the body text

    @param content: Any Plone contentish item (they all have description)

    @param text_field_name: Which schema field is used to supply the body text (may very depending on the content type)
    """

    # Body is Archetype "text" field in schema by default.
    # Accessor can take the desired format as a mimetype parameter.
    # The line below should trigger conversion from text/html -> text/plain automatically using portal_transforms
    field = content.Schema()[text_field_name]

    # Returns a Python method which you can call to get field's
    # for a certain content type. This is also security aware
    # and does not breach field-level security provded by Archetypes
    accessor = field.getAccessor(content)

    # body is UTF-8
    body = accessor(mimetype="text/plain")

    # Now let's take three first sentences or the whole content of body
    sentences = body.split(".")

    if len(sentences) > 3:
       intro = ".".join(sentences[0:3])
       intro += "." # Don't forget closing the last sentence
    else:
       # Body text is shorter than 3 sentences
       intro = body

    content.setDescription(intro)

# context is the reference of the folder where this script is run
for id, item in context.contentItems():
     # Iterate through all content items (this ignores Zope objects like this script itself)

     # Use RestrictedPython safe logging.
     # plone_log() method is permission aware and available on any contentish object
     # so we can safely use it from through-the-web scripts
     context.plone_log("Fixing:" + id)

     # Check that the description has never been saved (None)
     # or it is empty, so we do not override a description someone has
     # set before automatically or manually
     desc = context.Description() # All Archetypes accessor method, returns UTF-8 encoded string

     if desc is None or desc.strip() == "":
          # We use the HTML of field called "text" to generate the description
          create_automatic_description(item, "text")

# This will be printed in the browser when the script completes succesfully
return "OK"

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