collective.properties 1.0a1

Quick Intro

• it replicates ZMI /manage_propertiesForm form in Plone UI

• it’s like collective.interfaces package to manage zope interfaces via Plone but to manage PropertyManager based properties

• it uses z3c.form library to generate CRUD form

• it is tested in Plone 3 (Plone 4 to be checked soon)

• it’s installable via portal quickinstaller tool, for detailed instructions on how to add it to your zope instance, please, check docs/INSTALL.txt file

Property attributes

IPropertyManager interface provides properties with the next list of metadata:

• id: required

• type: required

• select_variable: optional; for selection and multiple selection property types to provide the name of a property or method which returns a list of strings from which the selection(s) can be chosen

• mode: optional; must contain 0 or more chars from the set ‘w’, ‘d’; ‘w’ - value may be changed by user, ‘d’ - user can delete property, ‘’ - property and it’s value may be shown in property listings, but it is read-only and may not be deleted; without mode key property is assumed to have the mode ‘wd’ (writeable and deletable)

• label: optional

• description: optional

Property types

Default property manager property types are listed below. All of them are planned to be supported by collective.properties management form (see TODO section below for what’s not implemented yet):

• float

• int

• long

• string

• lines

• text

• date

• tokens

• selection

• multiple selection

Notes

Property Manager interface defines some reserved strings that are prohibited to be used as property ids. It provides validation method which is also used by collective.properties management form. That’s why it’s secure to install this package in Plone site and let non-tech content manager use it’s properties form.

Not all standard properties are handled yet. For details, please, see TODO section below.

collective.properties form simply skips property types that it doesn’t know how to handle. So to manage them you still need to use standard /manage_propertiesForm form.

TODO

• handle selection and multiple selection property types

• handle date property type

• handle tokens property type

• make lines property type work

• disable deletion checkbox for non-deletable properties

• disable value field for non-editable properties

• add tests

• improve docs in README.txt as well as describe how form works in a form description, specifically on how selection property types work

• test on plone4