plone.tiles 1.8.2

APIs for managing tiles

plone.tiles implements a low-level, non-Plone/Zope2-specific support for creating “tiles”.

Contents

• Introduction

  • Creating a Simple Tile

  • ZCML Reference

  • Further Reading

• Tiles in detail

  • A simple transient tile

  • Tile traversal

  • Transient tile data

  • The tile data manager

  • Persistent tiles

  • Overriding transient data with persistent

  • Tile URLs

• ZCML directive

• ESI support

  • Marking a tile as ESI-rendered

  • ESI lookup

  • Tiles without heads or bodies

  • Convenience classes and placeholder rendering

• Changelog

  • 1.8.2 (2017-01-10)

  • 1.8.1 (2016-11-24)

  • 1.8.0 (2016-09-13)

  • 1.7.1 (2016-09-12)

  • 1.7.0 (2016-09-08)

  • 1.6.1 (2016-09-07)

  • 1.6 (2016-06-27)

  • 1.5.2 (2016-03-28)

  • 1.5.1 (2015-10-09)

  • 1.5.0 (2015-09-04)

  • 1.4.0 (2015-05-25)

  • 1.3.0 (2015-04-21)

  • 1.2 (2012-11-07)

  • 1.1 (2012-06-22)

  • 1.0 (2012-05-14)

  • 1.0a1 (2010-05-17)

Introduction

For the purposes of this package, a tile is a browser view and an associated utility providing some metadata about that view. The metadata includes a title and description, an ‘add’ permission and optionally a schema interface describing configurable aspects of the tile. The idea is that a UI (such as Mosaic) can present the user with a list of insertable tiles and optionally render a form to configure the tile upon insertion.

A tile is inserted into a layout as a link:

<link rel="tile" target="placeholder" href="./@@sample.tile/tile1?option1=value1" />

The sub-path (tile1 in this case) is used to set the tile id attribute. This allows the tile to know its unique id, and, in the case of persistent tiles, look up its data. sample.tile is the name of the browser view that implements the tile. This is made available as the __name__ attribute. Other parameters may be turned into tile data, available under the data attribute, a dict, for regular tiles. For persistent tiles (those deriving from the PersistentTile base class), the data is fetched from annotations instead, based on the tile id.

There are three interfaces describing tiles in this package:

IBasicTile

is the low-level interface for tiles. It extends IBrowserView to describe the semantics of the __name__ and id attributes.

ITile

describes a tile that can be configured with some data. The data is accessible via a dict called data. The default implementation of this interface, plone.tiles.Tile, will use the schema of the tile type and the query string (self.request.form) to construct that dictionary. This interface also describes an attribute url, which gives the canonical tile URL, including the id sub-path and any query string parameters. (Note that tiles also correctly implement IAbsoluteURL.)

IPersistentTile

describes a tile that stores its configuration in object annotations, and is needed when configuration values cannot be encoded into a query string. The default implementation is in plone.tiles.PersistentTile. To make it possible to have several tiles of a given type on the same layout, the annotations are keyed by the tile __name__.

Internally tiles are described by ITileType. It contains attributes for the tile name, title, description, add permission and schema (if required).

A properly configured tile consists of

• a utility providing ITileType with the same name as the tile browser view.

• a browser view providing IBasicTile or one of its derivatives.

The directive <plone:tile ... /> is used to register both of these components in one go.

To support creation of appropriate tile links, plone.tiles.data contains two methods:

1. encode() and

2. decode()

to help turn a data dictionary into a query string and turn a request.form dict into a data dict that complies with a tile’s schema interface.

In addition to the default tile configuration sources (transient query strings for ITile and persistent annotations for IPersistentTile), it is possible to define custom tile configuration sources by registering dictionary like ITileDataStorage-adapter for your context, request and tile interface. Will be accessed dictionary like by tile data managers with tile id and its data dictionary.

Creating a Simple Tile

The most basic tile looks like this:

from plone.tiles import Tile

class MyTile(Tile):

    def __call__(self):
        return u'<html><body><p>Hello world</p></body></html>'

Note that the tile is expected to return a complete HTML document. This will be interpolated into the page output according to the following rules:

• The contents of the tile’s <head /> section is appended to the output document’s <head /> section.

• The contents of the tile’s <body /> section will replace the tile placeholder as indicated by the tile link.

Note that this package does not provide these interpolations. For a Plone implementation of the interpolation algorithm, see plone.app.blocks.

If you require a persistent tile, subclass plone.tiles.PersistentTile instead. You may also need a schema interface if you want a configurable transient or persistent tile.

To register the tile, use ZCML like this:

<configure xmlns:plone="http://namespaces.plone.org/plone">

    <plone:tile
        name="sample.tile"

        title="A title for the tile"
        description="My tile's description"
        add_permission="my.add.Permission"
        schema=".interfaces.IMyTileSchema"

        class=".mytile.MyTile"
        permission="zope.Public"
        for="*"
        layer="*"
        />

</configure>

The first five attributes describe the tile by configuring an appropriate ITileType directive. The rest mimics the <browser:page /> directive, so you can specify a template file and omit the class, or use both a template and class.

If you want to register a persistent tile with a custom schema, but a template only, you can do e.g.:

<plone:tile
    name="sample.persistenttile"
    title="A title for the tile"
    description="My tile's description"
    add_permission="my.add.Permission"
    schema=".interfaces.IMyTileSchema"
    class="plone.tiles.PersistentTile"
    template="mytile.pt"
    permission="zope.Public"
    for="*"
    />

If you want to override an existing tile, e.g. with a new layer or more specific context, you must omit the tile metadata (title, description, icon, add permission or schema). If you include any metadata you will get a conflict error on Zope startup. This example shows how to use a different template for our tile:

<plone:tile
    name="sample.persistenttile"
    template="override.pt"
    permission="zope.Public"
    for="*"
    layer=".interfaces.IMyLayer"
    />

ZCML Reference

The plone:tile directive uses the namespace xmlns:plone="http://namespaces.plone.org/plone". In order to enable it loading of its meta.zcml is needed, use:

<include package="plone.tiles" file="meta.zcml" />

When registering a tile, in the background two registrations are done:

1. How to add the tile (registered as a utility component as an instance of plone.tiles.type.TileType).

   It is possible to register a tile without adding capabilities. However, such a tile needs to be directly called, there won’t be any TTW adding possible.

   This registration can be done once only.

   This registration uses the following attributes:

   • name (required)

   • title (required)

   • description (optional)

   • icon (optional)

   • permission (required)

   • add_permission (required for adding capabilities)

   • edit_permission (optional, default to add_permission)

   • delete_permission (optional, default to add_permission)

   • schema (optional)

2. How to render the tile (as a usual page).

   It is possible to register different renderers for the same name but for different contexts (for or layer).

   This registration uses the following attributes:

   • name (required)

   • for (optional)

   • layer (optional)

   • class (this or template or both is required)

   • template (this or class or both is required)

   • permission (required)

The directives attributes have the following meaning:

name

A unique, dotted name for the tile.

title

A user friendly title, used when configuring the tile.

description

A longer summary of the tile’s purpose and function.

icon

Image that represents tile purpose and function.

permission

Name of the permission required to view the tile.

add_permission

Name of the permission required to instantiate the tile.

edit_permission

Name of the permission required to modify the tile. Defaults to the add_permission.

delete_permission

Name of the permission required to remove the tile. Defaults to the add_permission.

schema

Configuration schema for the tile. This is used to create standard add/edit forms.

for

The interface or class this tile is available for.

layer

The layer (request marker interface) the tile is available for.

class

Class implementing this tile. A browser view providing IBasicTile or one of its derivatives.

template

The name of a template that renders this tile. Refers to a file containing a page template.

Further Reading

See tiles.rst and directives.rst for more details.

Tiles in detail

Tiles are a form of view component used to compose pages. Think of a tile as a view describing one part of a page, that can be configured with some data described by a schema and inserted into a layout via a dedicated GUI.

Like a browser view, a tile can be traversed to and published on its own. The tile should then return a full HTML page, including a <head /> with any required resources, and a <body /> with the visible part of the tile. This will then be merged into the page, using a system such as plone.app.blocks.

The API in this package provides support for tiles being configured according to a schema, with data either passed on the query string (transient tiles) or retrieved from annotations (persistent tiles).

Note that there is no direct UI support in this package, so the forms that allow users to construct and edit tiles must live elsewhere. You may be interested in plone.app.tiles and plone.app.mosaic for that purpose.

To use the package, you should first load its ZCML configuration:

>>> configuration = """\
... <configure
...      xmlns="http://namespaces.zope.org/zope"
...      xmlns:plone="http://namespaces.plone.org/plone"
...      i18n_domain="plone.tiles.tests">
...
...     <include package="zope.component" file="meta.zcml" />
...     <include package="zope.app.publisher" file="meta.zcml" />
...
...     <include package="plone.tiles" file="meta.zcml" />
...     <include package="plone.tiles" />
...
... </configure>
... """

>>> from StringIO import StringIO
>>> from zope.configuration import xmlconfig
>>> xmlconfig.xmlconfig(StringIO(configuration))

A simple transient tile

A basic tile is a view that implements the ITile interface. The easiest way to do this is to subclass the Tile class:

>>> from plone.tiles import Tile
>>> class SampleTile(Tile):
...
...     __name__ = 'sample.tile' # would normally be set by a ZCML handler
...
...     def __call__(self):
...         return '<html><body><b>My tile</b></body></html>'

The tile is a browser view:

>>> from plone.tiles.interfaces import ITile
>>> ITile.implementedBy(SampleTile)
True

>>> from zope.publisher.interfaces.browser import IBrowserView
>>> IBrowserView.implementedBy(SampleTile)
True

The tile instance has a __name__ attribute (normally set at class level by the <plone:tile /> ZCML directive), as well as a property id. The id may be set explicitly, either in code, or by sub-path traversal. For example, if the tile name is example.tile, the id may be set to tile1 using an URL like http://example.com/foo/@@example.tile/tile1.

This tile is registered as a normal browser view, alongside a utility that provides some information about the tile itself. Normally, this is done using the <plone:tile /> directive. Here’s how to create one manually:

>>> from plone.tiles.type import TileType
>>> sampleTileType = TileType(
...     u'sample.tile',
...     u'Sample tile',
...     'dummy.Permission',
...     'dummy.Permission',
...     description=u'A tile used for testing',
...     schema=None)

The name should match the view name and the name the utility is registered under. The title and description may be used by the UI. The add permission is the name of a permission that will be required to insert the tile. The schema attribute may be used to indicate schema interface describing the tile’s configurable data - more on this below.

To register a tile in ZCML, we could do:

<plone:tile
    name="sample.tile"
    title="Sample tile"
    description="A tile used for testing"
    add_permission="dummy.Permission"
    class=".mytiles.SampleTile"
    for="*"
    permission="zope.Public"
    />

Note

The tile name should be a dotted name, prefixed by a namespace you control. It’s a good idea to use a package name for this purpose.

It is also possible to specify a layer or template like the browser:page directive, as well as a schema, which we will describe below.

We’ll register the sample tile directly here, for later testing.

>>> from zope.component import provideAdapter, provideUtility
>>> from zope.interface import Interface
>>> from plone.tiles.interfaces import IBasicTile

>>> provideUtility(sampleTileType, name=u'sample.tile')
>>> provideAdapter(SampleTile, (Interface, Interface), IBasicTile, name=u'sample.tile')

Tile traversal

Tiles are publishable as a normal browser view. They will normally be called with a sub-path that specifies a tile id. This allows tiles to be made aware of their instance name. The id is unique within the page layout where the tile is used, and may be the basis for looking up tile data.

For example, a tile may be saved in a layout as a link like:

<link rel="tile" target="mytile" href="./@@sample.tile/tile1" />

(The idea here is that the tile link tells the rendering algorithm to replace the element with id mytile with the body of the rendered tile - see plone.app.blocks for details).

Let’s create a sample context, look up the view as it would be during traversal, and verify how the tile is instantiated.

>>> from zope.component import getMultiAdapter
>>> from zope.interface import Interface
>>> from zope.interface import implementer
>>> from zope.publisher.browser import TestRequest

>>> class IContext(Interface):
...     pass

>>> @implementer(IContext)
... class Context(object):
...     pass

>>> context = Context()
>>> request = TestRequest()

>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> tile = tile['tile1'] # simulates sub-path traversal

The tile will now be aware of its name and id:

>>> isinstance(tile, SampleTile)
True
>>> tile.__parent__ is context
True
>>> tile.id
'tile1'
>>> tile.__name__
'sample.tile'

The sub-path traversal is implemented using a custom __getitem__() method. To look up a view on a tile, you can traverse to it after you’ve traversed to the id sub-path:

>>> from zope.component import adapts
>>> from zope.interface import Interface
>>> from zope.publisher.browser import BrowserView
>>> from zope.publisher.interfaces.browser import IDefaultBrowserLayer

>>> class TestView(BrowserView):
...     adapts(SampleTile, IDefaultBrowserLayer)
...     def __call__(self):
...         return 'Dummy view'

>>> provideAdapter(TestView, provides=Interface, name='test-view')

>>> tile.id is not None
True
>>> tile['test-view']()
'Dummy view'

If there is no view and we have an id already, we will get a KeyError:

>>> tile['not-known'] # doctest: +ELLIPSIS
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
KeyError: 'not-known'

To ensure consistency with Zope’s various tangles publication machines, it is also possible to traverse using the publishTraverse method:

>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> tile = tile.publishTraverse(request, 'tile1') # simulates sub-path traversal

>>> isinstance(tile, SampleTile)
True
>>> tile.__parent__ is context
True
>>> tile.id
'tile1'
>>> tile.__name__
'sample.tile'

Transient tile data

Let us now consider how tiles may have data. In the simplest case, tile data is passed on the query string, and described according to a schema. A simple schema may look like:

>>> import zope.schema

>>> class ISampleTileData(Interface):
...     title = zope.schema.TextLine(title=u'Tile title')
...     cssClass = zope.schema.ASCIILine(title=u'CSS class to apply')
...     count = zope.schema.Int(title=u'Number of things to show in the tile')

We would normally have listed this interface when registering this tile in ZCML. We can simply update the utility here.

>>> sampleTileType.schema = ISampleTileData

Tile data is represented by a simple dictionary. For example:

>>> data = {'title': u'My title', 'count': 5, 'cssClass': 'foo'}

The idea is that a tile add form is built from the schema interface, and its data saved to a dictionary.

For transient tiles, this data is then encoded into the tile query string. To help with this, a utility function can be used to encode a dict to a query string, applying Zope form marshalers according to the types described in the schema:

>>> from plone.tiles.data import encode
>>> encode(data, ISampleTileData)
'title=My+title&cssClass=foo&count%3Along=5'

The count%3Along=5 bit is the encoded version of count:long=5.

Note that not all field types may be saved. In particular, object, interface, set or frozen set fields may not be saved, and will result in a KeyError. Lengthy text fields or bytes fields with binary data may also be a problem. For these types of fields, look to use persistent tiles instead.

Furthermore, the conversion may not be perfect. For example, Zope’s form marshalers cannot distinguish between unicode and ascii fields. Therefore, there is a corresponding decode() method that may be used to ensure that the values match the schema:

>>> marshaled = {'title': u'My tile', 'count': 5, 'cssClass': u'foo'}

>>> from plone.tiles.data import decode
>>> decode(marshaled, ISampleTileData)
{'count': 5, 'cssClass': 'foo', 'title': u'My tile'}

When saved into a layout, the tile link would now look like:

<link rel="tile" target="mytile"
  href="./@@sample.tile/tile1?title=My+title&count%3Along=5&cssClass=foo" />

Let’s simulate traversal once more and see how the data is now available to the tile instance:

>>> context = Context()
>>> request = TestRequest(form={'title': u'My title', 'count': 5, 'cssClass': u'foo'})

>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> tile = tile['tile1']

>>> sorted(tile.data.items())
[('count', 5), ('cssClass', 'foo'), ('title', u'My title')]

Notice also how the data has been properly decoded according to the schema.

Transient tiles will get their data directly from the request parameters but, if a _tiledata JSON-encoded parameter is present in the request, this one will be used instead:

>>> import json

>>> request = TestRequest(form={
...     'title': u'My title', 'count': 5, 'cssClass': u'foo',
...     '_tiledata': json.dumps({'title': u'Your title', 'count': 6, 'cssClass': u'bar'})
...     })
>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> tile = tile['tile1']

>>> sorted(tile.data.items())
[(u'count', 6), (u'cssClass', u'bar'), (u'title', u'Your title')]

This way we can use transient tiles safely in contexts where the tile data can be confused with raw data coming from a form, e.g. in an edit form.

The tile data manager

The data attribute is a convenience attribute to get hold of a (cached) copy of the data returned by an ITileDataManager. This interface provides three methods: get(), to return the tile’s data, set(), to update it with a new dictionary of data, and delete(), to delete the data.

This adapter is mostly useful for writing UI around tiles. Using our tile above, we can get the data like so:

>>> from plone.tiles.interfaces import ITileDataManager
>>> dataManager = ITileDataManager(tile)
>>> dataManager.get() == tile.data
True

We can also update the tile data:

>>> dataManager.set({'count': 1, 'cssClass': 'bar', 'title': u'Another title'})
>>> sorted(dataManager.get().items())
[('count', 1), ('cssClass', 'bar'), ('title', u'Another title')]

The data can also be deleted:

>>> dataManager.delete()
>>> sorted(dataManager.get().items())
[('count', None), ('cssClass', None), ('title', None)]

Note that in the case of a transient tile, all we are doing is modifying the form dictionary of the request (or the _tiledata parameter of this dictionary, if present). The data needs to be encoded into the query string, either using the encode() method or via the tile’s IAbsoluteURL adapter (see below for details).

For persistent tiles, the data manager is a bit more interesting.

Persistent tiles

Not all types of data can be placed in a query string. For more substantial storage requirements, you can use persistent tiles, which store data in annotations.

Note

If you have more intricate requirements, you can also write your own ITileDataManager to handle data retrieval. In this case, you probably still want to derive from PersistentTile, to get the appropriate IAbsoluteURL adapter, among other things.

First, we need to write up annotations support.

>>> from zope.annotation.attribute import AttributeAnnotations
>>> provideAdapter(AttributeAnnotations)

We also need a context that is annotatable.

>>> from zope.annotation.interfaces import IAttributeAnnotatable
>>> from zope.interface import alsoProvides
>>> alsoProvides(context, IAttributeAnnotatable)

Now, let’s create a persistent tile with a schema.

>>> class IPersistentSampleData(Interface):
...     text = zope.schema.Text(title=u'Detailed text', missing_value=u'Missing!')

>>> from plone.tiles import PersistentTile
>>> class PersistentSampleTile(PersistentTile):
...
...     __name__ = 'sample.persistenttile' # would normally be set by ZCML handler
...
...     def __call__(self):
...         return u'<b>You said</b> %s' % self.data['text']

>>> persistentSampleTileType = TileType(
...     u'sample.persistenttile',
...     u'Persistent sample tile',
...     'dummy.Permission',
...     'dummy.Permission',
...     description=u'A tile used for testing',
...     schema=IPersistentSampleData)

>>> provideUtility(persistentSampleTileType, name=u'sample.persistenttile')
>>> provideAdapter(PersistentSampleTile, (Interface, Interface), IBasicTile, name=u'sample.persistenttile')

We can now traverse to the tile as before. By default, there is no data, and the field’s missing value will be used.

>>> request = TestRequest()

>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.persistenttile')
>>> tile = tile['tile2']
>>> tile.__name__
'sample.persistenttile'
>>> tile.id
'tile2'

>>> tile()
u'<b>You said</b> Missing!'

At this point, there is nothing in the annotations for the type either:

>>> dict(getattr(context, '__annotations__', {})).keys()
[]

We can write data to the context’s annotations using an ITileDataManager:

>>> dataManager = ITileDataManager(tile)
>>> dataManager.set({'text': u'Hello!'})

This writes data to annotations:

>>> dict(context.__annotations__).keys()
[u'plone.tiles.data.tile2']
>>> context.__annotations__[u'plone.tiles.data.tile2']
{'text': u'Hello!'}

We can get this from the data manager too, of course:

>>> dataManager.get()
{'text': u'Hello!'}

Note that as with transient tiles, the data attribute is cached and will only be looked up once.

If we now look up the tile again, we will get the new value:

>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.persistenttile')
>>> tile = tile['tile2']
>>> tile()
u'<b>You said</b> Hello!'

>>> tile.data
{'text': u'Hello!'}

We can also remove the annotation using the data manager:

>>> dataManager.delete()
>>> sorted(dict(context.__annotations__).items()) # doctest: +ELLIPSIS
[]

Overriding transient data with persistent

To be able to re-use the same centrally managed tile based layouts for multiple context objects, but still allow optional customization for tiles, it’s possible to override otherwise transient tile configuration with context specific persistent configuration.

This is done by either by setting a client side request header or query param X-Tile-Persistent:

>>> request = TestRequest(
...     form={'title': u'My title', 'count': 5, 'cssClass': u'foo',
...           'X-Tile-Persistent': 'yes'}
... )

Yet, just adding the flag, doesn’t create new persistent annotations on GET requests:

>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> ITileDataManager(tile)
<plone.tiles.data.PersistentTileDataManager object at ...>

>>> sorted(ITileDataManager(tile).get().items(), key=lambda x: x[0])
[('count', 5), ('cssClass', 'foo'), ('title', u'My title')]

>>> from zope.annotation.interfaces import IAnnotations
>>> list(IAnnotations(context).keys())
[]

That’s because the data is persistent only once it’s set:

>>> data = ITileDataManager(tile).get()
>>> data.update({'count': 6})
>>> ITileDataManager(tile).set(data)
>>> list(IAnnotations(context).keys())
[u'plone.tiles.data...']

>>> sorted(IAnnotations(context).values()[0].items(), key=lambda x: x[0])
[('count', 6), ('cssClass', 'foo'), ('title', u'My title')]

>>> sorted(ITileDataManager(tile).get().items(), key=lambda x: x[0])
[('count', 6), ('cssClass', 'foo'), ('title', u'My title')]

Without the persistent flag, fixed transient data would be returned:

>>> request = TestRequest(
...     form={'title': u'My title', 'count': 5, 'cssClass': u'foo'},
... )
>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> ITileDataManager(tile)
<plone.tiles.data.TransientTileDataManager object at ...>

>>> data = ITileDataManager(tile).get()
>>> sorted(data.items(), key=lambda x: x[0])
[('count', 5), ('cssClass', 'foo'), ('title', u'My title')]

Finally, the persistent override could also be deleted:

>>> request = TestRequest(
...     form={'title': u'My title', 'count': 5, 'cssClass': u'foo',
...           'X-Tile-Persistent': 'yes'}
... )
>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> ITileDataManager(tile)
<plone.tiles.data.PersistentTileDataManager object at ...>

>>> sorted(ITileDataManager(tile).get().items(), key=lambda x: x[0])
[('count', 6), ('cssClass', 'foo'), ('title', u'My title')]

>>> ITileDataManager(tile).delete()
>>> list(IAnnotations(context).keys())
[]

>>> sorted(ITileDataManager(tile).get().items(), key=lambda x: x[0])
[('count', 5), ('cssClass', 'foo'), ('title', u'My title')]

>>> request = TestRequest(
...     form={'title': u'My title', 'count': 5, 'cssClass': u'foo'},
... )
>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> ITileDataManager(tile)
<plone.tiles.data.TransientTileDataManager object at ...>

Tile URLs

As we have seen, tiles have a canonical URL. For transient tiles, this may also encode some tile data.

If you have a tile instance and you need to know the canonical tile URL, you can use the IAbsoluteURL API.

For the purposes of testing, we need to ensure that we can get an absolute URL for the context. We’ll achieve that with a dummy adapter:

>>> from zope.interface import implements
>>> from zope.component import adapts

>>> from zope.traversing.browser.interfaces import IAbsoluteURL
>>> from zope.publisher.interfaces.http import IHTTPRequest

>>> class DummyAbsoluteURL(object):
...     implements(IAbsoluteURL)
...     adapts(IContext, IHTTPRequest)
...
...     def __init__(self, context, request):
...         self.context = context
...         self.request = request
...
...     def __unicode__(self):
...         return u'http://example.com/context'
...     def __str__(self):
...         return u'http://example.com/context'
...     def __call__(self):
...         return self.__str__()
...     def breadcrumbs(self):
...         return ({'name': u'context', 'url': 'http://example.com/context'},)
>>> provideAdapter(DummyAbsoluteURL, name=u'absolute_url')
>>> provideAdapter(DummyAbsoluteURL)

>>> from zope.traversing.browser.absoluteurl import absoluteURL
>>> from zope.component import getMultiAdapter

>>> context = Context()
>>> request = TestRequest(form={'title': u'My title', 'count': 5, 'cssClass': u'foo'})
>>> transientTile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> transientTile = transientTile['tile1']

>>> absoluteURL(transientTile, request)
'http://example.com/context/@@sample.tile/tile1?title=My+title&cssClass=foo&count%3Along=5'

>>> getMultiAdapter((transientTile, request), IAbsoluteURL).breadcrumbs() == \
... ({'url': 'http://example.com/context', 'name': u'context'},
...  {'url': 'http://example.com/context/@@sample.tile/tile1', 'name': 'sample.tile'})
True

For convenience, the tile URL is also available under the url property:

>>> transientTile.url
'http://example.com/context/@@sample.tile/tile1?title=My+title&cssClass=foo&count%3Along=5'

The tile absolute URL structure remains unaltered if the data is coming from a _tiledata JSON-encoded parameter instead of from the request parameters directly:

>>> request = TestRequest(form={'_tiledata': json.dumps({'title': u'Your title', 'count': 6, 'cssClass': u'bar'})})
>>> transientTile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> transientTile = transientTile['tile1']

>>> absoluteURL(transientTile, request)
'http://example.com/context/@@sample.tile/tile1?title=Your+title&cssClass=bar&count%3Along=6'

For persistent tiles, the are no data parameters:

>>> context = Context()
>>> request = TestRequest(form={'title': u'Ignored', 'count': 0, 'cssClass': u'ignored'})
>>> persistentTile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.persistenttile')
>>> persistentTile = persistentTile['tile2']

>>> absoluteURL(persistentTile, request)
'http://example.com/context/@@sample.persistenttile/tile2'

>>> getMultiAdapter((persistentTile, request), IAbsoluteURL).breadcrumbs() == \
... ({'url': 'http://example.com/context', 'name': u'context'},
...  {'url': 'http://example.com/context/@@sample.persistenttile/tile2', 'name': 'sample.persistenttile'})
True

And again, for convenience:

>>> persistentTile.url
'http://example.com/context/@@sample.persistenttile/tile2'

If the tile doesn’t have an id, we don’t get any sub-path:

>>> request = TestRequest(form={'title': u'My title', 'count': 5, 'cssClass': u'foo'})
>>> transientTile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> absoluteURL(transientTile, request)
'http://example.com/context/@@sample.tile?title=My+title&cssClass=foo&count%3Along=5'

>>> request = TestRequest()
>>> persistentTile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.persistenttile')
>>> absoluteURL(persistentTile, request)
'http://example.com/context/@@sample.persistenttile'

We can also disallow query parameters providing data into our tiles

>>> import zope.schema
>>> from plone.tiles.directives import ignore_querystring

>>> class ISampleTileData(Interface):
...     unfiltered = zope.schema.Text(title=u'Unfiltered data')
...     ignore_querystring('unfiltered')
...     filtered = zope.schema.Text(title=u'filtered data')

>>> sampleTileType.schema = ISampleTileData

And create a tile with our new schema

>>> from plone.tiles import Tile
>>> class SampleTile(Tile):
...
...     __name__ = 'sample.unfilteredtile' # would normally be set by a ZCML handler
...
...     def __call__(self):
...         return '<html><body><div>{}{}</div></body></html>'.format(
...             self.data.get('unfiltered') or '',
...             self.data.get('filtered') or '')

We’ll register the sample unfiltered tile directly here, for testing.

>>> from zope.component import provideAdapter, provideUtility
>>> from zope.interface import Interface
>>> from plone.tiles.interfaces import IBasicTile

>>> provideUtility(sampleTileType, name=u'sample.unfilteredtile')
>>> provideAdapter(SampleTile, (Interface, Interface), IBasicTile, name=u'sample.unfilteredtile')

Let’s simulate traversal to test if form data is used:

>>> context = Context()
>>> request = TestRequest(form={'unfiltered': 'foobar', 'filtered': 'safe'})

>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.unfilteredtile')
>>> tile = tile['tile1']

Data should not contain unfiltered field:

>>> sorted(tile.data.items())
[('filtered', u'safe')]

Rendering the tile should not include ignored query string:

>>> 'foobar' in tile()
False

>>> tile()
'<html><body><div>safe</div></body></html>'

ZCML directive

A tile is really just a browser view providing IBasicTile (or, more commonly, ITile or IPersistentTile) coupled with a named utility providing ITileType. The names of the browser view and the tile should match.

To make it easier to register these components, this package provides a <plone:tile /> directive that sets up both. It supports several use cases:

• Registering a new tile from a class

• Registering a new tile from a template only

• Registering a new tile form a class and a template

• Registering a new tile for an existing tile type (e.g. for a new layer)

To test this, we have created a dummy schema and a dummy tile in testing.py, and a dummy template in test.pt.

Let’s show how these may be used by registering several tiles:

>>> configuration = """\
... <configure package="plone.tiles"
...      xmlns="http://namespaces.zope.org/zope"
...      xmlns:plone="http://namespaces.plone.org/plone"
...      i18n_domain="plone.tiles.tests">
...
...     <include package="zope.component" file="meta.zcml" />
...     <include package="zope.security" file="meta.zcml" />
...     <include package="zope.app.publisher" file="meta.zcml" />
...
...     <include package="plone.tiles" file="meta.zcml" />
...     <include package="plone.tiles" />
...
...     <permission
...         id="plone.tiles.testing.DummyAdd"
...         title="Dummy add permission"
...         />
...     <permission
...         id="plone.tiles.testing.DummyView"
...         title="Dummy view permission"
...         />
...
...     <!-- A tile configured with all available attributes -->
...     <plone:tile
...         name="dummy1"
...         title="Dummy tile 1"
...         description="This one shows all available options"
...         add_permission="plone.tiles.testing.DummyAdd"
...         schema="plone.tiles.testing.IDummySchema"
...         class="plone.tiles.testing.DummyTileWithTemplate"
...         template="test.pt"
...         for="plone.tiles.testing.IDummyContext"
...         layer="plone.tiles.testing.IDummyLayer"
...         permission="plone.tiles.testing.DummyView"
...         />
...
...     <!-- A class-only tile -->
...     <plone:tile
...         name="dummy2"
...         title="Dummy tile 2"
...         add_permission="plone.tiles.testing.DummyAdd"
...         class="plone.tiles.testing.DummyTile"
...         for="*"
...         permission="plone.tiles.testing.DummyView"
...         />
...
...     <!-- A template-only tile -->
...     <plone:tile
...         name="dummy3"
...         title="Dummy tile 3"
...         add_permission="plone.tiles.testing.DummyAdd"
...         template="test.pt"
...         for="*"
...         permission="plone.tiles.testing.DummyView"
...         />
...
...     <!-- Use the PersistentTile class directly with a template-only tile -->
...     <plone:tile
...         name="dummy4"
...         title="Dummy tile 4"
...         add_permission="plone.tiles.testing.DummyAdd"
...         schema="plone.tiles.testing.IDummySchema"
...         class="plone.tiles.PersistentTile"
...         template="test.pt"
...         for="*"
...         permission="plone.tiles.testing.DummyView"
...         />
...
...     <!-- Override dummy3 for a new layer -->
...     <plone:tile
...         name="dummy3"
...         class="plone.tiles.testing.DummyTile"
...         for="*"
...         layer="plone.tiles.testing.IDummyLayer"
...         permission="plone.tiles.testing.DummyView"
...         />
...
... </configure>
... """

>>> from StringIO import StringIO
>>> from zope.configuration import xmlconfig
>>> xmlconfig.xmlconfig(StringIO(configuration))

Let’s check how the tiles were registered:

>>> from zope.component import getUtility
>>> from plone.tiles.interfaces import ITileType

>>> tile1_type = getUtility(ITileType, name=u'dummy1')
>>> tile1_type
<TileType dummy1 (Dummy tile 1)>
>>> tile1_type.description
u'This one shows all available options'

>>> tile1_type.add_permission
'plone.tiles.testing.DummyAdd'

>>> tile1_type.view_permission
'plone.tiles.testing.DummyView'

>>> tile1_type.schema
<InterfaceClass plone.tiles.testing.IDummySchema>

>>> tile2_type = getUtility(ITileType, name=u'dummy2')
>>> tile2_type
<TileType dummy2 (Dummy tile 2)>
>>> tile2_type.description is None
True
>>> tile2_type.add_permission
'plone.tiles.testing.DummyAdd'
>>> tile2_type.schema is None
True

>>> tile3_type = getUtility(ITileType, name=u'dummy3')
>>> tile3_type
<TileType dummy3 (Dummy tile 3)>
>>> tile3_type.description is None
True
>>> tile3_type.add_permission
'plone.tiles.testing.DummyAdd'
>>> tile3_type.schema is None
True

>>> tile4_type = getUtility(ITileType, name=u'dummy4')
>>> tile4_type
<TileType dummy4 (Dummy tile 4)>
>>> tile4_type.description is None
True
>>> tile4_type.add_permission
'plone.tiles.testing.DummyAdd'
>>> tile4_type.schema
<InterfaceClass plone.tiles.testing.IDummySchema>

Finally, let’s check that we can look up the tiles:

>>> from zope.publisher.browser import TestRequest
>>> from zope.interface import implements, alsoProvides

>>> from plone.tiles.testing import IDummyContext, IDummyLayer

>>> class Context(object):
...     implements(IDummyContext)

>>> context = Context()
>>> request = TestRequest()
>>> layer_request = TestRequest(skin=IDummyLayer)

>>> from zope.component import getMultiAdapter
>>> from plone.tiles import Tile, PersistentTile
>>> from plone.tiles.testing import DummyTile, DummyTileWithTemplate

>>> tile1 = getMultiAdapter((context, layer_request), name='dummy1')
>>> isinstance(tile1, DummyTileWithTemplate)
True
>>> print tile1()
<b>test!</b>
>>> tile1.__name__
'dummy1'

>>> tile2 = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name='dummy2')
>>> isinstance(tile2, DummyTile)
True
>>> print tile2()
dummy
>>> tile2.__name__
'dummy2'

>>> tile3 = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name='dummy3')
>>> isinstance(tile3, Tile)
True
>>> print tile3()
<b>test!</b>
>>> tile3.__name__
'dummy3'

>>> tile4 = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name='dummy4')
>>> isinstance(tile4, PersistentTile)
True
>>> print tile4()
<b>test!</b>
>>> tile4.__name__
'dummy4'

>>> tile3_layer = getMultiAdapter((context, layer_request), name='dummy3')
>>> isinstance(tile3_layer, DummyTile)
True
>>> print tile3_layer()
dummy
>>> tile3_layer.__name__
'dummy3'

ESI support

Some sites may choose to render tiles in a delayed fashion using Edge Side Includes or some similar mechanism. plone.tiles includes some support to help render ESI placeholders. This is used in plone.app.blocks to facilitate ESI rendering. Since ESI normally involves a “dumb” replacement operation, plone.tiles also provides a means of accessing just the head and/or just the body of a tile.

To use the package, you should first load its ZCML configuration.

>>> configuration = """\
... <configure
...      xmlns="http://namespaces.zope.org/zope"
...      xmlns:plone="http://namespaces.plone.org/plone"
...      i18n_domain="plone.tiles.tests">
...
...     <include package="zope.component" file="meta.zcml" />
...     <include package="zope.app.publisher" file="meta.zcml" />
...
...     <include package="plone.tiles" file="meta.zcml" />
...     <include package="plone.tiles" />
...
... </configure>
... """

>>> from StringIO import StringIO
>>> from zope.configuration import xmlconfig
>>> xmlconfig.xmlconfig(StringIO(configuration))

Marking a tile as ESI-rendered

For ESI rendering to be available, the tile must be marked with the IESIRendered marker interface. We can create a dummy tile with this interface like so:

>>> from zope.interface import implementer
>>> from plone.tiles.interfaces import IESIRendered
>>> from plone.tiles import Tile

>>> @implementer(IESIRendered)
... class SampleTile(Tile):
...
...     __name__ = 'sample.tile' # would normally be set by ZCML handler
...
...     def __call__(self):
...         return '<html><head><title>Title</title></head><body><b>My tile</b></body></html>'

Above, we have created a simple HTML string. This would normally be rendered using a page template.

We’ll register this tile manually here. Ordinarily, of course, it would be registered via ZCML.

>>> from plone.tiles.type import TileType
>>> sampleTileType = TileType(
...     name=u'sample.tile',
...     title=u'Sample tile',
...     description=u'A tile used for testing',
...     add_permission='dummy.Permission',
...     view_permission='dummy.Permission',
...     schema=None)

>>> from zope.component import provideAdapter, provideUtility
>>> from zope.interface import Interface
>>> from plone.tiles.interfaces import IBasicTile

>>> provideUtility(sampleTileType, name=u'sample.tile')
>>> provideAdapter(SampleTile, (Interface, Interface), IBasicTile, name=u'sample.tile')

ESI lookup

When a page is rendered (for example by a system like plone.app.blocks, but see below), a tile placeholder may be replaced by a link such as:

<esi:include src="/path/to/context/@@sample.tile/tile1/@@esi-body" />

When this is resolved, it will return the body part of the tile. Equally, a tile in the head can be replaced by:

<esi:include src="/path/to/context/@@sample.tile/tile1/@@esi-head" />

To illustrate how this works, let’s create a sample context, look up the view as it would be during traversal, and instantiate the tile, before looking up the ESI views and rendering them.

>>> from zope.interface import implementer
>>> from zope.publisher.browser import TestRequest

>>> class IContext(Interface):
...     pass

>>> @implementer(IContext)
... class Context(object):
...     pass

>>> class IntegratedTestRequest(TestRequest):
...     @property
...     def environ(self):
...         return self._environ

>>> context = Context()
>>> request = IntegratedTestRequest()

The following simulates traversal to context/@@sample.tile/tile1

>>> from zope.interface import Interface
>>> from zope.component import getMultiAdapter
>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.tile')
>>> tile = tile['tile1'] # simulates sub-path traversal

This tile should be ESI rendered:

>>> IESIRendered.providedBy(tile)
True

At this point, we can look up the ESI views:

>>> head = getMultiAdapter((tile, request), name='esi-head')
>>> print head()
<title>Title</title>

>>> body = getMultiAdapter((tile, request), name='esi-body')
>>> print body()
<b>My tile</b>

Tiles without heads or bodies

In general, tiles are supposed to return full HTML documents. The esi-head and esi-body views are tolerant of tiles that do not. If they cannot find a <head /> or <body /> element, respectively, they will return the underlying tile output unaltered.

For example:

>>> from plone.tiles.esi import ESITile
>>> class LazyTile(ESITile):
...     __name__ = 'sample.esi1' # would normally be set by ZCML handler
...     def __call__(self):
...         return '<title>Page title</title>'

We won’t bother to register this for this test, instead just instantiating it directly:

>>> tile = LazyTile(context, request)['tile1']

>>> IESIRendered.providedBy(tile)
True

>>> head = getMultiAdapter((tile, request), name='esi-head')
>>> print head()
<title>Page title</title>

Of course, the ESI body renderer would return the same thing, since it can’t extract a specific body either:

>>> body = getMultiAdapter((tile, request), name='esi-body')
>>> print body()
<title>Page title</title>

In this case, we would likely end up with invalid HTML, since the <title /> tag is not allowed in the body. Whether and how to resolve this is left up to the ESI interpolation implementation.

Convenience classes and placeholder rendering

Two convenience base classes can be found in the plone.tiles.esi module. These extend the standard Tile and PersistentTile classes to provide the IESIRendered interface.

• plone.tiles.esi.ESITile, a transient, ESI-rendered tile

• plone.tiles.esi.ESIPersistentTile, a persistent, ESI-rendered tile

These are particularly useful if you are creating a template-only tile and want ESI rendering. For example:

<plone:tile
    name="sample.esitile"
    title="An ESI-rendered tile"
    add_permission="plone.tiles.tests.DummyAdd"
    template="esitile.pt"
    class="plone.tiles.esi.ESITile"
    for="*"
    permission="zope.View"
    />

Additionally, these base classes implement a __call__() method that will render a tile placeholder, if the request contains an X-ESI-Enabled header set to the literal ‘true’.

The placeholder is a simple HTML <a /> tag, which can be transformed into an <esi:include /> tag using the helper function substituteESILinks(). The reason for this indirection is that the esi namespace is not allowed in HTML documents, and are liable to be stripped out by transforms using the libxml2 / lxml HTML parser.

Let us now create a simple ESI tile. To benefit from the default rendering, we should implement the render() method instead of __call__(). Setting a page template as the index class variable or using the template attribute to the ZCML directive will work also.

>>> from plone.tiles.esi import ESITile

>>> class SampleESITile(ESITile):
...     __name__ = 'sample.esitile' # would normally be set by ZCML handler
...
...     def render(self):
...         return '<html><head><title>Title</title></head><body><b>My ESI tile</b></body></html>'

>>> sampleESITileType = TileType(
...     name=u'sample.esitile',
...     title=u'Sample ESI tile',
...     description=u'A tile used for testing ESI',
...     add_permission='dummy.Permission',
...     view_permission='dummy.Permission',
...     schema=None)

>>> provideUtility(sampleESITileType, name=u'sample.esitile')
>>> provideAdapter(SampleESITile, (Interface, Interface), IBasicTile, name=u'sample.esitile')

The following simulates traversal to context/@@sample.esitile/tile1

>>> tile = getMultiAdapter((context, request), name=u'sample.esitile')
>>> tile = tile['tile1'] # simulates sub-path traversal

By default, the tile renders as normal:

>>> print tile()
<html><head><title>Title</title></head><body><b>My ESI tile</b></body></html>

However, if we opt into ESI rendering via a request header, we get a different view:

>>> from plone.tiles.interfaces import ESI_HEADER_KEY
>>> request.environ[ESI_HEADER_KEY] = 'true'
>>> print tile() # doctest: +NORMALIZE_WHITESPACE
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <body>
        <a class="_esi_placeholder"
           rel="esi"
           href="http://127.0.0.1/@@esi-body?"></a>
    </body>
</html>

This can be transformed into a proper ESI tag with substituteESILinks():

>>> from plone.tiles.esi import substituteESILinks
>>> print substituteESILinks(tile()) # doctest: +NORMALIZE_WHITESPACE
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns:esi="http://www.edge-delivery.org/esi/1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <body>
        <esi:include src="http://127.0.0.1/@@esi-body?" />
    </body>
</html>

It is also possible to render the ESI tile for the head. This is done with a class variable ‘head’ (which would of course normally be set within the class):

>>> SampleESITile.head = True
>>> print tile() # doctest: +NORMALIZE_WHITESPACE
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <body>
        <a class="_esi_placeholder"
           rel="esi"
           href="http://127.0.0.1/@@esi-head?"></a>
    </body>
</html>

Changelog

1.8.2 (2017-01-10)

Bug fixes:

• Fix issue where transient tile was unable to encode data with list of unicode strings [datakurre]

• Remove unused unittest2 requirement [tomgross]

1.8.1 (2016-11-24)

Bugfix:

• Fix encode error in nested unicodes (like in plone.app.querystring) [tomgross]

• Restructure testing [tomgross]

1.8.0 (2016-09-13)

New features:

• Provide ignore_querystring form directive to mark particular tiles fields that are not allowed to default data from query string data [vangheem]

1.7.1 (2016-09-12)

• Fix issue where collective.cover was broken, because internal changes in default data managers [datakurre]

1.7.0 (2016-09-08)

New features:

• Option to customize storage layer with ITileDataStorage adapter [datakurre]

1.6.1 (2016-09-07)

Bug fixes:

• Reformat docs. [gforcada]

• Add coveralls shield. [gforcada]

1.6 (2016-06-27)

• Let TileType instances (tile registration utility) know about the view permission too. [jensens]

1.5.2 (2016-03-28)

• Fix issue where ESI href was not properly replaced. [jensens]

• Add section “ZCML Reference” to README.rst. [jensens]

• PEP8, code-analysis, documentation and packaging fixes. [jensens, mauritsvanrees]

1.5.1 (2015-10-09)

• Fix decoding List type of Choice value types [vangheem]

1.5.0 (2015-09-04)

• Add support for overriding transient data manager with persistent data manager by adding X-Tile-Persistent=1 into tile URL [datakurre]

• Fix persistent data manager to read its default from query string [vangheem]

1.4.0 (2015-05-25)

• Add support for encoding dictionary fields into tile URL [datakurre]

• Fix issue where saving or deleting transient tile data mutated the current request [datakurre]

• Fix issue where non-ascii characters in tile data raised UnicodeEncode/DecodeErrors [datakurre]

1.3.0 (2015-04-21)

• Fix edit_permission and delete_permission to default to add_permission only in TileType constructor [datakurre]

• Fix argument order in TileType constructor call [datakurre]

• Fix absolute_url-adapter to fallback to relative URL [datakurre]

• Add response to include absolute X-Tile-Url header [bloodbare]

1.2 (2012-11-07)

• Adding icon property for tiletype [garbas]

• Url that we pass via X-Tile-Url should be relative to current context [garbas]

• Adding support for more robust permissions for edit and delete on tiles [cewing calvinhp]

1.1 (2012-06-22)

• X-Tile-Uid header is passed on tile view containing tile’s id. [garbas]

• PEP 8/Pyflakes (ignoring E121, E123, E126, E127 and E501). [hvelarde]

1.0 (2012-05-14)

• Refactor ESI support. To use the ESITile and ESIPersistentTile base classes, you should either use a template assigned via ZCML or override the render() method. See esi.rst for full details. [optilude]

• Internationalized title and description of the tile directive. [vincentfretin]

• Use a json-encoded parameter in transient tiles as first option. [dukebody]

• Use adapters for the Zope Publisher type casting [dukebody]

• Conditionaly support z3c.relationfield’s RelationChoice fields [dukebody]

• Ignore type casting for fields without fixed type, like zope.schema.Choice [dukebody]

1.0a1 (2010-05-17)

• Initial release.