Customer Reviews

Zope Web Application Construction Kit

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have just retured from a trip to the dumpster; after tearing my hair out for two hours over the example in Chapter 3, I have rediscovered why I rarely trust books from this publisher. The example, as written, does not work, and the publisher has not offered any sort of errata for this book. If anyone would like a free copy of this book, go comb the Rockland landfill.

Aside from the untested and unproofed examples, the text was rather disjointed, and provided a skimming the surface view of Zope that seems to offer precious little foundation in the system. The open source book, provided at [web address] has been far more helpful, and cheaper to boot.

Buyer Beware. I bought this book to work through enough tutorials to prototype a Zope site. For each chapter, there are missing code fragments, code on the CD that doesn't match to the book, and lot's of general typos. I forgive the typos, as I believe this a translated work, but not having matching code really ticks me off.

In general, even a skilled developer _will not_ be able to work through _any_ of the examples to fruition. Thus the [money] you'll spend here will get you some background information, but not working examples.

The final insult to the reader is that the Publisher does not have an errata site where corrections could be posted. If you have the time, do some more research and skip this purchase. In the meantime, I'll continue to try and learn Zope... where's the zen?

Zope WACK can povide some very good general understanding of how Zope works and what you are supposed to do in order to get work done. It is particularly good, for instance, on the installation issues - better than the free downloadable Zope book. When it comes to specifics, though, it leaves quite a bit to be desired. Zope's foundation lies on the ability to manipulate web data - most notably databases. WACK's initial chapter on connecting Zope to databases provides a step-by-step tutorial - an addressbook example using Zope's built-in limited database (called Gadfly)... that doesn't work. Given that WACK doesn't provide an overview of how the various pieces are supposed to work together, troubleshooting is hampered even more. More frustrating, WACK falls into a familiar trap of books of this sort: there is no indication of possible troublespots to look for when something goes wrong (e.g., user error). Finally, since the examples WACK provides are cumulative, if something doesn't work - and you've quadruple-checked your code character for character - you're stuck.

In general, though, WACK is a book of individual tutorials for various uses for Zope, rather than an overview of how Zope can be used to build web applications. The book IS one of the better descriptive texts on how to do various Zope tasks, as it's written in very clear language (the authors are German, and the Sam's proofreaders failed to catch all of the translations, so be prepared for minor German vocabulary lessons). I would recommend this book for an alternative explanation on how to do things, but be prepared to have another, more technically accurate, reference manual handy to cross-check the glitches.

I'm a newbie to this Zope, and would really like to see some working examples of this product, so I can at least compare what is correct to what is in this book. None of the examples I've come across so far work! What's worse; I cannot figure out what's wrong with them because I DO NOT KNOW ZOPE YET! I bought this for $., and I guess for examples, its ok. But man, if you want to come across as an authority in something, it wouild be helpful to make your books' examples workable.

This book has had a slating from several reviewers, mainly due to the fact that the code supplied for Chapter 3 doesn't work as is - at least on current versions of Zope. I found that by removing the quotation marks from all the dtml-sqlvar variables it then worked perfectly, and the code from chapter 4 had no issues at all.

Other than that, this is a fine introduction to many aspects of Zope and well-known Zope products, though perhaps becoming a little outdated now (summer 2003) with the advent of Plone and the imminent(ish) release of Zope 3. There are some typos, and the book is written in a charming European English: these shouldn't cause you any real problems.

Unfortunately this book is getting somewhat dated and if you don't have the inclination to check on the things it says or get involved with the on-line community you might find yourself rather out of date. Most of the core concepts of Zope are still somewhat the same. However the book does miss some areas but it is a good primer. It's, in my opinion any ways vastly better than The Zope Book which is very poorly written, unfriendly, confusing and all around not good. I recommend this book for people who already understand Python and have developed web applications in the past using other technologies. That's not to say this book isn't a good primer, it's still fairly good for that too. But expect to back up your reading with some IRC conversations in #Zope irc.freenode.net best of luck all you Zopers.

I have them all, but if I have problems with ZOPE, I go to this book. It is excellent and well written. Start here before going to Zope and Book of Zope.

I have shelved this book at least three times in disgust and frustration. Each time I pull it from the shelf, I think: "There must be SOMETHING useful in there". Hours later, I re-shelve it again, wondering why I don't just throw this amazingly content-free book away. All the other comments about typos etc. are absolutely true. This book takes a confusing subject, adds 500-odd pages to it, and does absolutely nothing but leave the reader at the starting point, wishing for the hours of his/her life back.

I found this book helpful as an example collection of things you can do easily in zope. It got a few demos, I wanted made, up and running quickly.