[Zope] Accessing hierarchical information in a CORBA server

[Tres Seaver]

vonWedel@lfpt.rwth-aachen.de wrote:

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> I looked into Zope quite recently and I'm very impressed of all
> its features.  After getting started with some basics, I'd like
> to make a real-world application, migrating from a set of
> CGI-scripts written in Python but I'm still puzzled how to
> actually solve my problem, especially using the dtml-tree.
> 
> I want to access information in a CORBA server which is more or
> less hierarchically structured, so I'd like to use the neat
> trees to display the hierarchy and selecting one of the items
> in the hierarchy directly should open a page with further
> information about that object.
> 
> As I have to use CORBA, an external method written in Python
> seems the only possible way to make a connection from the tree
> to the server.
>
> In the How-To's, I found the following example
> (http://www.zope.org/Members/anthony/tree-coding-tricks):
> 
> class _dummy: def __init__(self, name): self.name=name
> 
>    def child_lookup(parent): c = [] for i in range(0,5):
>    c.append(_dummy("%s.%d"%(parent, i))) return c
> 
> used like this:
> 
> <dtml-let name="0">
> <dtml-tree id=name > branches_expr="child_lookup(parent=name)">
>  <b><dtml-var > name></b>
> </dtml-tree>
> </dtml-let>
> 
> This toy example is similar to what I would write, but I need
> to handle different object types on different levels of the
> hierarchy. The tree can obviously only handle functions, not
> real CORBA objects (as the note in the example section in the
> HowTo suggests...0, right? This means I have to cope with large
> if-then-else constructs in the function given to branches_expr?
> 
> CORBA objects are identified by a so-called IOR which is some
> sort of a stringified object reference but in a non-readable
> way. Can I use a non-unique 'display name' for each node in the
> tree and some unique identfier (the IOR) internally?
> 
> Sorry for so many questions, but I haven't found a lot of info
> about using the dtml-tree together with external methods.
> 
> Lars

I have a proposal on dev.zope.org for adding CORBA client support
to Zope:

 http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/CorbaClientIntegration

One of the initial applications I had in mind for this feature was
a COSNaming browser, which would be very like what you are doing.

Tres.
-- 
===============================================================
Tres Seaver                                tseaver@digicool.com
Digital Creations     "Zope Dealers"       http://www.zope.org