[Zope] zope access to external files

J Cameron Cooper jccooper@jcameroncooper.com
Tue, 04 Mar 2003 14:24:13 -0600


>
>
>     http://www.zope.org/Members/arielpartners/ExternalFile
>     http://www.zope.org/Members/MacGregor/ExtFile
>     http://sourceforge.net/projects/localfs
>
>Questions:
>
>     Can anyone recommend one of these products over the other?
>     Will they let me do what I describe?
>     Are there products which are a better fit?
>     Is there an easier/better way?
>  
>
There's one angle I want to cover here that hasn't been done yet. I 
won't recommend any of these over the other (they've all worked fine for 
me in various capacities) but I will describe how they are different:

ExtFile/ExtImage simply stores its contents on the filesystem. Although 
you can find out where, you really shouldn't monkey with the repository. 
This is the product to use if you just want to keep things out of the 
ZODB and don't care about getting to things on the FS.

External File gets its data from a *specific* file on the filesystem. If 
you want a single file to live in Zope and on your FS, and to be 
manipulable from both, use this.

LocalFS (and yes, it is hard to find on zope.org) makes an entire 
specific directory visible in Zope as folderish objects and content. If 
you have a variable number of files to access, or want to publish a 
whole directory, and don't mind it being in its own folder, use this.

I suppose there's room in the list above for an ExtFolder product, which 
stores some tree of Zope objects on the FS somewhere. But perhaps 
mounting a Directory Storage does this. Academic anyway.

Also, if you ask me, using Zope's security mechanisms is a fine reason 
to put even mostly-static content under Zope control. There is good 
reason to let Apache serve static content, however: makes me think about 
how, say, a StaticApacheFile might work.

          --jcc