Overview

The z3c.jbot (or "Just a bunch of templates") package allows easy customization of existing templates and images. It works on Zope 2 and Zope 3.

The Chameleon rendering engine is supported.

Use of this package adds a small (2-3 ms per request on Plone) to the total application response time.

Usage

To override a particular file, first determine its canonical filename. It's defined as the path relative to the package within which the file is located; directory separators are replaced with dots.

Example:

Suppose you want to override: /plone/app/layout/viewlets/logo.pt

You would use the filename: plone.app.layout.viewlets.logo.pt

Simply drop the file in a directory and register that directory for use with jbot using a ZCML-directive:

<include package="z3c.jbot" file="meta.zcml" />

<browser:jbot
    directory="<path>"
    layer="<layer>" />

Templates in views, viewlets and portlets

Any template that is defined as a class-attribute can be overriden using jbot, e.g. those used in views, viewlets and portlets. The template overrides may be registered for any request layer or only a specific layer.

CMF objects

Any skin-object (e.g. images, templates) on the file system (directory views) can be overridden.

Plone resources

If plone.resource is installed, it's possible to use jbot to override filesystem resources.

Deprecation warnings

Imagine this situation:

• You have a base package with a page template original.pt.
• Someone else overrides this in a project specific package by creating a file base.original.pt.
• Now for some reason you rename the template to new.pt.
• The template override in the project no longer works and the other person starts asking questions or complaining.

To solve this problem, you can register that a template path is deprecated. First add a dictionary to the base package, let's say in a file utils.py:

deprecated_templates = {
    "base.original.pt": "base.new.pt",
}

In your configure.zcml you add:

<configure
    xmlns="http://namespaces.zope.org/zope"
    xmlns:zcml="http://namespaces.zope.org/zcml"
    >
...
  <configure zcml:condition="have jbot-deprecations">
    <include package="z3c.jbot" file="meta.zcml" />
    <browser:jbotDeprecated dictionary=".utils.deprecated_templates" />
  </configure>
</configure>

The result is:

1. The old override base.original.pt works for the new location as well.
2. The user gets a warning that they should use base.new.pt instead.

Author

Malthe Borch <[email protected]>