Zope and ExpanDrive

Zope is a free and open-source, object-oriented web application server written in the Python programming language.

ExpanDrive is a 3rd Party product that allows the mounting of FTP and SFTP servers as filesytems.

Editing a Zope template using Flux

Using ExpanDrive, we can mount the Zope database as a filesystem, and treat it like any other Flux project.

Note

Flux can only work with Zope Page Templates, not DTML files.

Step 1

First, mount the Zope FTP server using ExpanDrive, the host and port may be different on your installation, check with the person who installed Zope if you are not sure.

Step 2

You can now navigate using the Finder to find your page templates.



Step 3

Open the folder containing your page templates using Flux in the normal way, the easiest way to do this is to simply drag the folder onto the Flux icon on the Dock.

Step 4

The folder will open like any normal Flux project, although you may find it to run a little slower than usual, this is due to the FTP overhead. This slowdown will be quite apparent if your Zope server is on a different machine to the one running Flux. Edit and save your pages as you normally would.

Done!

Now, when you visit your Zope based site, the changes should have taken effect.

Tip

See Custom Preview URLs to make editing Zope sites even easier!