What are the Zope essentials ?

Question

I started a job where Zope is involved. I know Python and my new Boss think I am going to handle the application server quickly.

I had a look to this system and it's obviously very complex, so I'd like to know where to start and to look next;

Can somebody gives a step by step way to learn Zope ? For once, I don't need the how, I need the what ;-)

EDIT : I have all the resources I need to learn how to play with the beast, and of course, I have been on the main web sites. But there is too much information, and too theoretical. I need to know, from a power user point of view, what path to choose to learn one thing then another in order to be efficient with Zope.

EDIT 2 : Reacting to the aswers. Zope 2.10, sorry I should have wrote it before.

And please, stop giving me ways to find information. I have them, documentation is not the issue. The reel problem is what to learn. Zope is huge.

Anyway, thank you for answering, at least you wanna help :-)

Answer 1

Not sure whether you're talking Zope 2 or Zope 3...but assuming it's the latter, I'd start with Web Component Development with Zope 3 by Philipp von Weitershausen. The companion site for the book is here: http://worldcookery.com/. It's an excellent, exhaustive guide to Zope.

The Zope 3 API is a good reference to have around.

Answer 2

If there's no existing website, I'd look at two options:

• Plone is a full-blown really-big web content management system. Handy downloads for getting a running site at the press of a button. Userfriendly. Work your way up or down from there. There are a number of books, including a free end-user manual at plonebook.info.

• Starting from scratch and want to start with something that is easier to dig into? Grok is basically zope3 made friendly for programmers. It does away with lots of the xml setup ("xml pushups") and bookkeeping code needed in regular zope3, but keeps all of zope3's power available under the hood.

Answer 3

Are you building on an existing system? If so, I'd try to work out how the existing system works first. Just log into the management interface and look around. Don't press save :-).

• Learn the TAL and METAL template system
• Buildout to make it easy to build/install
• FileSystemDirectoryView (if you are using Plone, it comes with a similar system)
• You can prototype things through the web and save them to a FileSystemDirectoryView product with FSDump

There's lots more, but without any idea of what your application needs to do, it's hard to suggest anything else.

Answer 4

A Comprehensive Guide to Zope Component Architecture

http://muthukadan.net/docs/zca.html

Answer 5

plone like system but for zope3 - z3ext.net

Answer 6

A word of warning, Zope is famous for it's Z shape leanrning curve, which tends to repeat as you delve deeper into the inner workings:

"Wow, this is powerful"
...
"Wow, this is really, really hard"
...
"Wow, this is great now I know what I'm doing."
...
"Wow, I'm stuck again"

etc...

Almost all of my problems when I started were caused by ZCML misconfigurations / misunderstandings.

Also, +1 for Philipp von Weitershausen's book, it's brilliantly clear and incisive (although Zope 3 focused).