Multi user address book application
Project description
icemac.addressbook
Purpose: Store, search and export addresses and phone numbers using a web application.
Status: version used in production but still missing some functionality (See To do)
Features
General
multi-client capability
user and role management
Completely translated into German, and easily translateable into other languages.
Optimized for the following browsers: Firefox, Safari. IE works but might look ugly. (Mobile version of Safari has some glitches.)
Data
store data of persons including postal address, e-mail address, home page address, phone number and files
add data fields to persons and addresses using the user interface
ability to change the oder of the fields of persons and adresses
assign keywords to persons
import data from XLS (Excel) or CSV files
Search & Export
search for persons by keywords and names
export persons found using a search as XLS file
update a single field of multiple persons as returned by a search (multi-update)
Technical
really good test coverage of program code (> 98 %)
data storage is an object database (ZODB) so no additional database is required
Screenshots
See SourceForge.
Installation
Prerequisites
You only need Python 2.6.x. (Other python versions are currently not supported.)
First installation
CAUTION: icemac.addressbook can’t be installed using easy_install or pip, you have to follow these simple steps.
Neither you need any root privileges nor it installs anything outside its directory.
Download the source distribution (see Download).
Extract the downloaded file.
Run install.py using your desired python, e. g.:
$ python2.6 install.py
Answer the questions about admin user name, password and so on.
Run the tests. See Run the tests
Start the application. See Run the application
Update
If you are updating from version 0.3.x or earlier follow the steps described in First installation followed by the steps described in Second part of steps for really old versions.
If you are updating from version 0.4 or newer follow these steps:
1. Download and extract the source distribution (see Download) to a new a directory.
2. Run install.py using your desired python added by the path to the previous installation. This way values you entered previously are used as defaults instead of the application defaults. Example:
$ python2.6 install.py ../icemac.addressbook-0.4
Answer the questions about admin user name, password and so on.
Start the new instance of the application.
If you get an error when running the application after updating which looks like:
zope.generations.interfaces.UnableToEvolve: (..., u'icemac.addressbook', ...)
If you upgrade from version 0.x then you have to upgrade to version 0.5.4 first and start the application, so that legacy data can be converted. Version 1.x is no longer compatible with these older versions.
You might need to not install any additional packages during these upgrade steps as the installer always tries to install the newest versions of the additonal packages which might not be compatible with the older versions.
Second part of steps for really old versions
Stop the old instance of the application.
Create a backup of the ZODB og the old instance using:
$ bin/backup
Copy the backup directory (var/backups) to the new instance.
Restore the backup into the new instance using:
$ bin/restore
Start the new instance of the application.
Run the tests
Run the unit tests and functional tests using:
$ bin/test
To run the Selenium tests you additionally need: Selenium Server. Download “Selenium Server” from SeleniumHQ. Start it like any other jar package is started on your operating system. Run all tests using:
$ bin/test --all
Run the application
To run the application instance in foreground start using:
$ bin/addressbook fg
To run it as a demon process start using:
$ bin/addressbook start
To stop the demon process call:
$ bin/addressbook stop
The default URL is to access the application is:
http://127.0.0.1:8080
To log-in at this URL you need the username and password you chose when running install.py. The are stored in admin.zcml.
Create a new address book using the add address book link on the right. How to create new users inside this address book is described in Create new users.
Change configuration of the installation
The values you entered during installation resp. update are stored in a file named install.user.ini in the address book directory.
To change the configuration values call install.py using python and enter a . as parameter like this:
$ python2.6 install.py .
The configuration questions get presented to you with your previously entered values as default.
To remove additional packages you have to edit the [package] section of install.user.ini. There is currently no other way for removal.
To remove the user name which should own the process you have to edit the [server] section of install.user.ini. Remove the value from the user line.
User management
Roles
Access to the address book is only granted after authentication. There are three roles to authorize a user:
visitor: visit all person’s data, search and export, change own password
editor: permissions of visitor + edit all person’s data, change own log-in name
administrator: permissions of editor + create and change address book and users
Create new users
Users are persons from the address book augmented by log-in information.
To create the first new user inside an address book the adminstrator (who was created in First installation) has to log-in and then do the following:
create a new person with an e-mail address using Add person.
create a new user using Master data –> Users –> Add user.
The newly created user has now a log-in (e-mail address) for the address book the person belonges to.
To do
Next major version
Probably: Full text search.
Longer term
The following features might be implemented over the next months:
person data
store picture per person
company as entity
import
vCard
SQLite (Apple’s Addressbook.app)
export
custom XLS export
LDAP export
more search abilities
full text search
combined search
wildcard search
Change log
1.8.1 (2012-04-20)
Features
Added favicon.ico to the application.
Split preferences into multiple groups.
Bugfixes
The search result handler which updates data did not update the catalog, so these changes were invisible for the search. Updated catalog and search result handler.
User preferences were stored globally instead of locally in the address book of the user. Users with the same internal ID shared preferences across address books. As the internal IDs are simply a counter this happened every time if using the multi-client capability.
The problem was fixed by storing user preferences locally and copying existing global preferences over to the each address book where a user for the internal user ID of the preferences exists.
Other
Updated other dependent packages (outside ZTK) to newest versions.
Using Fanstatic – a WSGI middleware – to deliver CSS and JS instead of hurry.resource.
1.8.0 (2011-12-14)
Features
Added search result handler which allows to send an e-mail to the persons found by the search.
Bugfixes
The search result handler which updates data did not handle keywords well, it was not possible to remove a keyword from a person using that handler.
Other
Added some Screenshots to the SourceForge page.
Using Chameleon 2 as HTML render engine resulting in faster page rendering. (Test run in half of the time now.)
Updated to Zope Toolkit 1.1.3 for dependent packages.
Updated other dependent packages (outside ZTK) to newest versions.
Dropped some package dependencies which only existed for compatibility reasons with older versions. Data gets converted during first start-up.
1.7.0 (2011-11-03)
General
Dropped support for Python 2.5, so currently only Python 2.6 is supported.
UI changes
Previously search results could only be exported. The options have been widened, so different handlings of search results are possible. So deletion of the selected persons has been moved to these search result handlers.
Added explanation text to search from.
Features
Added a new search type: Search for person names. You may use wildcards in this search (? for a single character or * for multiple characters).
Search results now display the columns the user selected in his personal preferences.
Added search result handler to modify a single field on all selected persons in the search result. Depending on the kind of the field different operations are possible (replace with, append to, remove from, add to, multipy with, intersect with, …). Only users with “Administrator” role can use this handler as wrong usage might be dangerous for the data.
Bug fixes
Running the address book in a vhost environment did not allow to access the about screen, as it was only registered for the root folder.
Other
Updated to Zope Toolkit 1.1 for dependent packages.
Integrated decorator package into distribution as needed version is prone to disappear from PyPI.
Changed test setup to use plone.testing layer.
1.6.0 (2011-02-03)
Features
Added ability to sort the fields of the entities.
Bug fixes
It is no longer possible to add new fields to the ‘main adresses and numbers’ entity as it makes no sense and breaks the address book.
Previous Versions
See OLD_CHANGES.txt inside the package.
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