Frequency

Zope

Mon Jun 27th 21:59:20 2005

Zope, a web-application framework that Tyler wanted to use for Blogotomy for v1 last year, is pretty damn impressive. DTML pages, Python scripts, and SQL methods all work together seamlessly. It makes development so easy and pretty much emphasizes code reuse. Tyler and I were getting code knocked out much more quickly than we could have had we used any other platform (that I know of).

Here's the problem: I've become an even bigger fan of Ruby than I was of Python. I'm more comfortable with Ruby and, in my opinion, the code is much easier to read and maintain. I've looked into web-application frameworks for Ruby and come across Ruby on Rails, which looks to be pretty slick, but it's not the same. I want Zope's UI, DTML (or something like it), database functionality and ease of use, and the list goes on and on. Basically, I want the ability to use Ruby from Zope. Even in DTML methods and documents, you can inline a single line of Python code if that's all you need. I want to be able to do the same with Ruby.

A Zope product called ZShellScripts has been released that allows you to write scripts in Perl, PHP, Ruby, Bash and even Lisp to include in Zope. I have a feeling, though, that integrating those scripts into the mix will not be as seamless as using a standard Python method. With Zope's Python methods, you could call DTML, SQL and other Python methods from your Zope instance as if they were functions written right into that very script. I don't know if ZShellScripts can do that, and I'd be pretty amazed if it could, seeing as it can't just use Python's eval statement to execute. I have yet to try it, but I'll be skeptical until I do.