Dynamic views

Description

How to programmatically change the active view of a Plone content item

Introduction

Dynamic views are views which the content editor can choose for his or her content from the Display... drop down menu in the green edit frame.

By default, Plone comes with dynamic views for

• Folder listing
• Summary
• Photo album
• etc.

The default view can be also a content item picked from the folder. Available content item types are controlled by portal_properties -> site_properties -> default_page_types.

More info

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9432229/enabling-folder-as-one-of-default-content-item-views

Permission for changing the view template of an item

A user needs the "Modify view template" permission to use the dynamic view dropdown. If you want to restrict this ability, grant/revoke this permission adequately.

This can be useful for some content-types like Dexterity ones, where dynamic views are enabled by default, and the easiest way to disable them is using this permission.

Default dynamic views

Plone supports few dynamic views for folders out of the box

• Summary view (folder_summary_view)
• Tabular view (folder_tabular_view)
• Album view (atct_album_view)
• Listing (folder_listing)
• Full view (folder_full_view)

These are defined in portal_types information for the Folder content type and mapped to the Display menu all over in ZCML using browser:menuItem as described below.

Newly created folders have this dynamic view applied

• Products.CMFPlone/skins/plone_content/folder_summary_view.pt (a non-view based old style Zope 2 page template)

More info

• Overriding views

Creating a dynamic view

Dynamic views can be a 'skins template' or a BrowserView. The dynamic view machinery only cares about the path name coming after the context object.

Registering a dynamic view menu item

Your content type must support dynamic views

• The content type subclasses Products.CMFDynamicViewFTI.browserdefault.BrowserDefaultMixin

You need to register a dynamic view menu item with the corresponding view in your configure.zcml:

<browser:menuItem
      for="Products.ATContentTypes.interface.IATFolder"
      menu="plone_displayviews"
      title="Product listing"
      action="@@product_listing"
      description="List folder contents as product summary view"
      />

Note

Products.ATContentTypes uses non-standard name for "interfaces" package. There, it is "interface", while all other packages use "interfaces".

The view must be listed in portal_types for the content type. In this case, we should enable it for Archetypes folders using the following GenericSetup XML profiles/default/types/Folder.xml.

Note that you don't need to copy the whole Folder.xml / Topic.xml from Products/CMFPlone/profiles/default/types. Including the changed fields (view_methods) in the XML code is enough.

You can also change this through portal_types in the ZMI.

Note

view_methods must not have the @@ view signature in their method name.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<object name="Folder"
   meta_type="Factory-based Type Information with dynamic views"
   i18n:domain="plone" xmlns:i18n="http://xml.zope.org/namespaces/i18n">
     <property name="view_methods">
      <element value="folder_summary_view"/>
      <element value="folder_tabular_view"/>
      <element value="atct_album_view"/>
      <element value="folder_listing"/>

      <!-- We retrofit these new views for Folders in portal_types info -->
      <element value="product_listing"/>

     </property>
</object>

Also, if you want Collections to have this listing, you need to add the following profiles/default/types/Topic.xml.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<object name="Topic"
   meta_type="Factory-based Type Information with dynamic views"
   i18n:domain="plone" xmlns:i18n="http://xml.zope.org/namespaces/i18n">
 <property name="view_methods">
  <element value="folder_listing"/>
  <element value="folder_summary_view"/>
  <element value="folder_tabular_view"/>
  <element value="atct_album_view"/>
  <element value="atct_topic_view"/>

  <!-- We retrofit these new views for Folders in portal_types info -->
  <element value="product_listing"/>

 </property>
</object>

Checking that your view is available

Products.CMFDynamicViewFTI.browserdefault.BrowserDefaultMixin.getAvailableLayouts() returns the list of known layouts like following:

[('folder_summary_view', 'Summary view'),
('folder_tabular_view', 'Tabular view'),
('atct_album_view', 'Thumbnail view'),
('folder_listing', 'Standard view'),
('product_listing', u'Product listing')]

layout_ids = [ id for id, title in self.portal.folder.getAvailableLayouts() ]
self.assertTrue("product_list" in layout_ids)

Getting active layout

>>> self.portal.folder.getLayout()
'atct_album_view'

Changing default view programmatically

self.portal.folder.setLayout("product_listing")

Default page

The default page is the content chosen to display when the visitor arrives at a URL without any subpages or views selected.

This is useful if you are doing the folder listing manually and want to filter out the default view.

The default_page helper view can be used to manipulate default pages.

Getting the default page

# Filter out default content
container = self.getListingContainer()
default_page_helper = getMultiAdapter((container, self.request), name='default_page')

# Return content object which is the default page or None if not set
default_page = default_page_helper.getDefaultPage(container)

Another example how to use this:

from Products.CMFCore.interfaces import IFolderish

def hasTabs(self):
    """
    Determine whether the page itself, or default page, in the case of folders, has setting showTabs set true.

    Show tab setting defined in dynamicpage.py.
    """


    page = self.context

    try:
        if IFolderish.providedBy(self.context):
            folder = self.context
            default_page_helper = getMultiAdapter((folder, self.request), name='default_page')
            page_name = default_page_helper.getDefaultPage(folder)
            page = folder[page_name]
    except:
        pass

    tabs = getattr(page, "showTabs", False)

    return tabs

Setting the default page can be done as simple as setting default_page attribute of the folder to be the id of the default page:

folder.default_page = "my_content_id"

More information can be found in

• https://svn.plone.org/svn/plone/plone.app.layout/trunk/plone/app/layout/globals/context.py
• https://svn.plone.org/svn/plone/plone.app.layout/trunk/plone/app/layout/navigation/defaultpage.py

Setting a view using marker interfaces

If you need to have a view for few individual content items only, it is best to do using marker interfaces.

• Register a view against a marker interface
• Assign this marker interface to a content item using the Zope Management Interface (ZMI)

For more info, see

• http://www.netsight.co.uk/blog/2010/5/21/setting-a-default-view-of-a-folder-in-plone
• ::doc::marker interfaces </components/interfaces>

Migration script from default view to another

Below is a script snippet which allows you to change the default view for all folders to another type. You can execute the script through the ZMI as a Python Script.

Script code:

from StringIO import StringIO

buf = StringIO()
orignal='fancy_zoom_view'
target='atct_album_view'
for brain in context.portal_catalog(portal_type="Folder"):
        obj = brain.getObject()
        if getattr(obj, "layout", None) == orignal:
                print >> buf, "Updated:" + obj.absolute_url()
                obj.setLayout(target)
return buf.getvalue()

This will allow you to migrate from collective.fancyzoom to Plone 4's default album view / Products.PipBox.

Method aliases

Method aliases allow you to redirect basic actions (view, edit) to content type specific views. Aliases are configured in portal_types.

Other resources

• http://blog.jphoude.qc.ca/2008/09/14/plone-changing-title-zope3-views/
• http://plone.org/documentation/how-to/how-to-create-and-set-a-custom-homepage-template-using-generic-setup
• CMFDynamicView plone.org product page