plone.app.memberschema 1.0a1

Support for storing member data based on interfaces

Introduction
============

This package provides support for building managing member properties via
zope.schema type schemata. It installs as a PAS property plugin, which, by
default stores data in the ZODB.

Once the plugin is installed, you can write a schema interface as normal,
e.g.::

>>> from zope.interface import Interface
>>> from zope import schema
>>> class Hobbies(Interface):
... """Details member's hobbies
... """
...
... favorite_hobby = schema.TextLine(title=u"Favorite hobby")
... num_hobbies = schema.Int(title=u"Number of hobbies", min=0)

If this was in a module my.memberdata.schema, you could add the following
to the `schemata` property found in acl_users/schema_properties in your
Plone site::

my.memberdata.schema.Hobbies

Properties can then be accessed with the usual API, e.g.::

>>> member.getProperty('favorite_hobby')

Note that field names must be unique. If a field exists in more than one
schemata, the first schemata listed takes precedence.

Default fields
--------------

There are a number of default fields, split across several schemata. These
are all found in plone.app.memberschema.default, and include:

Basics -- full name and email address
Location -- location and language
Details -- biography and home page
Settings -- other individual settings

GenericSetup importer
---------------------

You can install a new schemata like this using GenericSetup. Add a file called
memberschema.xml to your profile, with data like:

<memberschema>
<schema>my.memberdata.schema.Hobbies</schema>
</memberschema>

If you wish to purge the list before adding your own schemata, set an
attribute `purge="true"` on the <memberschema /> element. By default, your
new schema will go at the end of the list. You can change the order by adding
either an `insert-before` or an `insert-after` attribute to the <schema />
element. The value is either another fully qualified interface name, or "*",
to indicate that the element should go first/last.

Forms
-----

The package provides a member data edit form using the plone.autoform package.
By default, it will list each schema in its own fieldset. You may annotate
your schema interface with the various hints that plone.autform expects,
either manually, by loading the schema from a plone.supermodel XML file, or
using the grokkers in plone.directives.form. See those packages for more
details.

There are two views provided out of the box: '@@edit-profile' must take a
user id as a query string parameter ('id'). It is protected by the permission
zope2.ManageUsers. '@@my-profile' is used to edit the current user's profile.
It is protected by cmf.SetOwnProperties.

Note that this package does not wire the views up anywhere, so you'll need to
link to them yourself, and possibly hide or override Plone's standard
'personalize_form' template.

Alternate storages
------------------

The PAS API is still the canonical way to get and set member properties. If
you want to make sure that a given field comes from, say, LDAP, the easiest
way is often to make sure that there's an appropriate PAS plugin activated
as an IPropertiesPlugin that sits before the schema_properties plugin and
provides the relevant property.

Alternatively, if you want to implement your own storage, you can implement
an `IBags` adapter. This should adapt the plugin (you can, for example, set
a custom marker interface on the plugin class to achieve such an override)
and must return an `IBag` - really, just an object onto which values can get
set or from which retrieved.

Acknowledgements
----------------

plone.app.memberschema draws inspiration from ore.member by Kapil Thangavelu.

Changelog
=========

1.0a1 - 2009-04-17
------------------

* Initial release