z3c.unconfigure 3.0

Disable specific ZCML directives in other package's configuration

Documentation

Introduction

This package allows you to disable specific bits of ZCML configuration that may occur in other packages. For instance, let’s consider a simple ZCML directive that prints strings and a silly one that prints lolcat messages:

>>> zcml("""
... <print msg="Hello World!" />
... <lolcat who="I" canhas="cheezburger" />
... """)
Hello World!
I can has cheezburger?

Now let’s say this directive were used a bunch of times, but we wanted to prevent one or two of its occurrences. To do that we simply repeat the directive inside the unconfigure grouping directive. This grouping directive will look at all the previous directives and filter out the ones we want to exclude:

>>> zcml("""
... <configure>
...   <print msg="Hello World!" />
...   <lolcat who="I" canhas="cheezburger" />
...   <print msg="Goodbye World!" />
...   <print msg="LOL!" />
...
...   <include package="z3c.unconfigure" file="meta.zcml" />
...   <unconfigure>
...     <lolcat who="I" canhas="cheezburger" />
...     <print msg="LOL!" />
...   </unconfigure>
... </configure>
... """)
Hello World!
Goodbye World!

If you’re trying to unconfigure something that hasn’t been configured in the first place, nothing will happen:

>>> zcml("""
... <configure>
...   <include package="z3c.unconfigure" file="meta.zcml" />
...   <unconfigure>
...     <lolcat who="I" canhas="cheezburger" />
...   </unconfigure>
... </configure>
... """)

Where to place “unconfiguration”

What’s a good place to add the unconfigure directives, you may ask. Certainly, the example from above is not very realistic because both the original directives and the filters are in one file. What typically happens is that you have some third party package that has much configuration of which you’d like to disable just one or two directives. Like this file, for instance:

>>> cat('lolcat.zcml')
<configure>
  <print msg="Hello World!" />
  <print msg="Important configuration here." />
  <lolcat who="I" canhas="cheezburger" />
  <print msg="Goodbye World!" />
  <print msg="LOL!" />
  <print msg="This is the last directive" />
</configure>

What you can do now is write a separate ZCML file in your package. A good name for it would be overrides.zcml (which is the naming convention for ZCML files containing overriding directives, a technique not unlike to what unconfigure does). For example, let’s say we wanted to undo some silly configuration in the above third party file:

>>> cat('overrides.zcml')
<configure>
  <include package="z3c.unconfigure" file="meta.zcml" />
  <unconfigure>
    <lolcat who="I" canhas="cheezburger" />
    <print msg="LOL!" />
  </unconfigure>
</configure>

What you would do now is include first that third party package’s configuration and then load your overrides (which is typically done using includeOverrides, either explicitly by you or for you by site.zcml):

>>> zcml("""
... <configure>
...   <include file="lolcat.zcml" />
...   <includeOverrides file="overrides.zcml" />
... </configure>
... """)
Hello World!
Important configuration here.
Goodbye World!
This is the last directive

In this case, simply including the file with the <include /> directive would’ve sufficed as well. What matters is that the “unconfiguration” happens after the original configuration, and override files are a good place to ensure this.

It can also be conveniend to unconfigure an entire zcml file. This can be done without using z3c.unconfigure, if you use the <exclude /> directive before you include that file:

>>> zcml("""
... <configure>
...   <exclude file="lolcat.zcml" />
...   <print msg="The new hello" />
...   <include file="lolcat.zcml" />
...   <include package="z3c.unconfigure" file="meta.zcml" />
...   <print msg="The final goodbye" />
... </configure>
... """)
The new hello
The final goodbye

Or you can try to use an include statement inside an unconfigure block:

>>> zcml("""
... <configure>
...   <print msg="The new hello" />
...   <include file="lolcat.zcml" />
...   <include package="z3c.unconfigure" file="meta.zcml" />
...   <unconfigure>
...     <include file="lolcat.zcml" />
...   </unconfigure>
...   <print msg="The final goodbye" />
... </configure>
... """)
The new hello
The final goodbye

Changes

3.0 (2025-04-14)

• Replace pkg_resources namespace with PEP 420 native namespace.

• Drop support for Python 3.8.

2.1 (2024-10-16)

• Add support for Python 3.12, 3.13.

• Drop support for Python 3.7.

2.0 (2023-02-10)

• Drop support for Python < 3.7.

• Add support for Python 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11.

1.1 (2012-10-26)

• Added support for zope.configuration 3.8.0, which changed the internal data structures from tuples to dicts.

• Dropped support for zope.configuration 3.7.x and older.

• Unconfiguring an entire zcml file (include statement inside an unconfigure block) now works.

1.0.1 (2008-08-07)

• Added a meta.zcml file so that the <unconfigure> directive can actually be registered from ZCML.

1.0 (2008-08-07)

First public release.