how to make Plone Dexterity container look like Archetypes folder

Question

I've created a Dexterity product that includes container and non-container Dexterity content types. Having discovered collective.documentviewer (yay! thanks! huzzah!), I'd like to use its dvpdf-group-view, but that is registered in ZCML as being for Folders, and my Dexterity containers don't qualify. I've looked through the web interfaces available on my container type, added SiteRoot, and that enabled the view to be applied, but is also completely wrong.

I'm confident there's a right way to do this, and I'm pretty sure it's central to the whole adapter/interface mechanism, but I just can't find it in any of the books.

Anyone care to try an explanation? First, the line or two that would enable a Dexterity container to pretend it's also a Folder; second, how to change the default view of a single instance of a Dexterity type so that it presents a foreign component's view?

Thanks.

Answer 1

1. Register the view for dexterity containers too

The view is registered for the Archetypes folder interface (Products.CMFCore.interfaces._content.IFolderish), but your dexterity container does not provide this interface (but plone.dexterity.interfaces.IDexterityContainer). The reason may be that the product and/or the view is not compatible with dexterity.

Anway, you can try it out yourself by registering the view also for the the IDexterityContainer interface by putting a little ZCML in the configure.zcml in your package (see also the Creating a package section of the Dexterity Developer Manual):

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

    <configure package="collective.documentviewer">

        <browser:page
            name="dvpdf-group-view"
            for="plone.dexterity.interfaces.IDexterityContainer"
            class=".views.GroupView"
            template="templates/group-view.pt"
            permission="zope2.View"
            layer=".interfaces.ILayer" />

    </configure>

</configure>

The <browser:page> is copied from the collective.documentviewer configure.zcml but I've changed the interface for= to the dexterity container interface, so that the view also works for dexterity containers.

The inner <configure package="collective.documentviewer"> tells the ZCML parser that the configuration should be applied as if the configure.zcml would be directly in collective.documentviewer - this allows you for example to use the original template (otherwise you would have to copy it or do some nasty things).

I did not test it myself: it may still be that the view needs an archetypes container and does not work with a dexterity container. It may also be that you have to register more components from the documentviewer for dexterity containers (maybe the menus? take a look at what is registered in the original configure.zcml.

If everything works well you should consider doing the changes in collective.documentviewer on github directly and make a pull-request to the author (be aware that dexterity is not plone-core yet). But first ask if and how you should do it :-)

2. Changing the default view

With plone it is possible to define multiple views for a specific type. The view can then be selected in the display menu per instance of this type. If you open up http://localhost:8080/Plone/portal_types/manage_main and click on your type, there is a field Available view methods, where you can add the view-name (dvpdf-group-view) on a seperate line.

After you create a new object of your type or visit an existing one, you have a "Display"-menu which should list the view. Select it and this object now has this view as default.

(If you want to make the view not selectable on other objects of this type you could just remove it from the type configuration so that it is not selectable anymore - the existing configuration of your object will stay).