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Before you get too far, it's probably worth having a quick read of the Roundup design documentation.
Customisation of Roundup can take one of six forms:
The third case is special because it takes two distinctly different forms depending upon whether the tracker has been initialised or not. The other two may be done at any time, before or after tracker initialisation. Yes, this includes adding or removing properties from classes.
Trackers have the following structure:
Tracker File | Description |
---|---|
config.ini | Holds the basic tracker configuration |
schema.py | Holds the tracker schema |
initial_data.py | Holds any data to be entered into the database when the tracker is initialised. |
db/ | Holds the tracker's database |
db/files/ | Holds the tracker's upload files and messages |
db/backend_name | Names the database back-end for the tracker |
detectors/ | Auditors and reactors for this tracker |
extensions/ | Additional web actions and templating utilities. |
html/ | Web interface templates, images and style sheets |
lib/ | optional common imports for detectors and extensions |
The config.ini located in your tracker home contains the basic configuration for the web and e-mail components of roundup's interfaces.
Changes to the data captured by your tracker is controlled by the tracker schema. Some configuration is also performed using permissions - see the security / access controls section. For example, to allow users to automatically register through the email interface, you must grant the "Anonymous" Role the "Email Access" Permission.
The following is taken from the Python Library Reference (May 20, 2004) section "ConfigParser -- Configuration file parser":
The configuration file consists of sections, led by a "[section]" header and followed by "name = value" entries, with line continuations on a newline with leading whitespace. Note that leading whitespace is removed from values. The optional values can contain format strings which refer to other values in the same section. Lines beginning with "#" or ";" are ignored and may be used to provide comments.
For example:
[My Section] foodir = %(dir)s/whatever dir = frobwould resolve the "%(dir)s" to the value of "dir" ("frob" in this case) resulting in "foodir" being "frob/whatever".
Settings in this section are used by Postgresql and MySQL backends only
Outgoing email options. Used for nosy messages, password reset and registration approval requests.
Roundup Mail Gateway options
Nosy messages sending
You may generate a new default config file using the roundup-admin genconfig command.
Configuration variables may be referred to in lower or upper case. In code, variables not in the "main" section are referred to using their section and name, so "domain" in the section "mail" becomes MAIL_DOMAIN. The configuration variables available are:
You can't add new variables to the config.ini file in the tracker home but you can add two new config.ini files:
For example, the following in detectors/config.ini:
[main] qa_recipients = email@example.com
is accessible as:
db.config.detectors['QA_RECIPIENTS']
Note that the name grouping applied to the main configuration file is applied to the extension config files, so if you instead have:
[qa] recipients = email@example.com
then the above db.config.detectors['QA_RECIPIENTS'] will still work.
Note
if you modify the schema, you'll most likely need to edit the web interface HTML template files and detectors to reflect your changes.
A tracker schema defines what data is stored in the tracker's database. Schemas are defined using Python code in the schema.py module of your tracker.
The schema.py module contains two functions:
The "classic" schema looks like this (see section setkey(property) below for the meaning of 'setkey' -- you may also want to look into the sections setlabelprop(property) and setorderprop(property) for specifying (default) labelling and ordering of classes.):
pri = Class(db, "priority", name=String(), order=String()) pri.setkey("name") stat = Class(db, "status", name=String(), order=String()) stat.setkey("name") keyword = Class(db, "keyword", name=String()) keyword.setkey("name") user = Class(db, "user", username=String(), organisation=String(), password=String(), address=String(), realname=String(), phone=String(), alternate_addresses=String(), queries=Multilink('query'), roles=String(), timezone=String()) user.setkey("username") msg = FileClass(db, "msg", author=Link("user"), summary=String(), date=Date(), recipients=Multilink("user"), files=Multilink("file"), messageid=String(), inreplyto=String()) file = FileClass(db, "file", name=String()) issue = IssueClass(db, "issue", topic=Multilink("keyword"), status=Link("status"), assignedto=Link("user"), priority=Link("priority")) issue.setkey('title')
You must never:
Your schema may be changed at any time before or after the tracker has been initialised (or used). You may:
In the tracker above, we've defined 7 classes of information:
- priority
- Defines the possible levels of urgency for issues.
- status
- Defines the possible states of processing the issue may be in.
- keyword
- Initially empty, will hold keywords useful for searching issues.
- user
- Initially holding the "admin" user, will eventually have an entry for all users using roundup.
- msg
- Initially empty, will hold all e-mail messages sent to or generated by roundup.
- file
- Initially empty, will hold all files attached to issues.
- issue
- Initially empty, this is where the issue information is stored.
We define the "priority" and "status" classes to allow two things: reduction in the amount of information stored on the issue and more powerful, accurate searching of issues by priority and status. By only requiring a link on the issue (which is stored as a single number) we reduce the chance that someone mis-types a priority or status - or simply makes a new one up.
A Class defines a particular class (or type) of data that will be stored in the database. A class comprises one or more properties, which gives the information about the class items.
The actual data entered into the database, using class.create(), are called items. They have a special immutable property called 'id'. We sometimes refer to this as the itemid.
A Class is comprised of one or more properties of the following types:
All Classes automatically have a number of properties by default:
FileClasses save their "content" attribute off in a separate file from the rest of the database. This reduces the number of large entries in the database, which generally makes databases more efficient, and also allows us to use command-line tools to operate on the files. They are stored in the files sub-directory of the 'db' directory in your tracker. FileClasses also have a "type" attribute to store the MIME type of the file.
IssueClasses automatically include the "messages", "files", "nosy", and "superseder" properties.
The messages and files properties list the links to the messages and files related to the issue. The nosy property is a list of links to users who wish to be informed of changes to the issue - they get "CC'ed" e-mails when messages are sent to or generated by the issue. The nosy reactor (in the 'detectors' directory) handles this action. The superseder link indicates an issue which has superseded this one.
They also have the dynamically generated "creation", "activity" and "creator" properties.
The value of the "creation" property is the date when an item was created, and the value of the "activity" property is the date when any property on the item was last edited (equivalently, these are the dates on the first and last records in the item's journal). The "creator" property holds a link to the user that created the issue.
Select a String property of the class to be the key property. The key property must be unique, and allows references to the items in the class by the content of the key property. That is, we can refer to users by their username: for example, let's say that there's an issue in roundup, issue 23. There's also a user, richard, who happens to be user 2. To assign an issue to him, we could do either of:
roundup-admin set issue23 assignedto=2
or:
roundup-admin set issue23 assignedto=richard
Note, the same thing can be done in the web and e-mail interfaces.
Select a property of the class to be the label property. The label property is used whereever an item should be uniquely identified, e.g., when displaying a link to an item. If setlabelprop is not specified for a class, the following values are tried for the label:
- the key of the class (see the setkey(property) section above)
- the "name" property
- the "title" property
- the first property from the sorted property name list
So in most cases you can get away without specifying setlabelprop explicitly.
Select a property of the class to be the order property. The order property is used whenever using a default sort order for the class, e.g., when grouping or sorting class A by a link to class B in the user interface, the order property of class B is used for sorting. If setorderprop is not specified for a class, the following values are tried for the order property:
- the property named "order"
- the label property (see setlabelprop(property) above)
So in most cases you can get away without specifying setorderprop explicitly.
Create an item in the database. This is generally used to create items in the "definitional" classes like "priority" and "status".
When we sort items in the hyperdb, we use one of a number of methods, depending on the properties being sorted on:
Note that if an "order" property is defined on a Class that is used for sorting, all items of that Class must have a value against the "order" property, or sorting will result in random ordering.
The Roundup wiki has examples of how schemas can be customised to add new functionality.
Detectors are initialised every time you open your tracker database, so you're free to add and remove them any time, even after the database is initialised via the roundup-admin initialise command.
The detectors in your tracker fire before (auditors) and after (reactors) changes to the contents of your database. They are Python modules that sit in your tracker's detectors directory. You will have some installed by default - have a look. You can write new detectors or modify the existing ones. The existing detectors installed for you are:
If you don't want this default behaviour, you're completely free to change or remove these detectors.
See the detectors section in the design document for details of the interface for detectors.
Auditors are called with the arguments:
audit(db, cl, itemid, newdata)
where db is the database, cl is an instance of Class or IssueClass within the database, and newdata is a dictionary mapping property names to values.
For a create() operation, the itemid argument is None and newdata contains all of the initial property values with which the item is about to be created.
For a set() operation, newdata contains only the names and values of properties that are about to be changed.
For a retire() or restore() operation, newdata is None.
Reactors are called with the arguments:
react(db, cl, itemid, olddata)
where db is the database, cl is an instance of Class or IssueClass within the database, and olddata is a dictionary mapping property names to values.
For a create() operation, the itemid argument is the id of the newly-created item and olddata is None.
For a set() operation, olddata contains the names and previous values of properties that were changed.
For a retire() or restore() operation, itemid is the id of the retired or restored item and olddata is None.
Sample additional detectors that have been found useful will appear in the 'detectors' directory of the Roundup distribution. If you want to use one, copy it to the 'detectors' of your tracker instance:
Generally speaking, the following rules should be observed:
Auditors may raise the Reject exception to prevent the creation of or changes to items in the database. The mail gateway, for example, will not attach files or messages to issues when the creation of those files or messages are prevented through the Reject exception. It'll also not create users if that creation is Reject'ed too.
To use, simply add at the top of your auditor:
from roundup.exceptions import Reject
And then when your rejection criteria have been detected, simply:
raise Reject
The module roundup.mailer contains most of the nuts-n-bolts required to generate email messages from Roundup.
In addition, the IssueClass methods nosymessage() and send_message() are used to generate nosy messages, and may generate messages which only consist of a change note (ie. the message id parameter is not required - this is referred to as a "System Message" because it comes from "the system" and not a user).
Note
If you modify the content of definitional classes, you'll most likely need to edit the tracker detectors to reflect your changes.
Customisation of the special "definitional" classes (eg. status, priority, resolution, ...) may be done either before or after the tracker is initialised. The actual method of doing so is completely different in each case though, so be careful to use the right one.
As the "admin" user, click on the "class list" link in the web interface to bring up a list of all database classes. Click on the name of the class you wish to change the content of.
You may also use the roundup-admin interface's create, set and retire methods to add, alter or remove items from the classes in question.
See "adding a new field to the classic schema" for an example that requires database content changes.
A set of Permissions is built into the security module by default:
These are assigned to the "Admin" Role by default, and allow a user to do anything. Every Class you define in your tracker schema also gets an Create, Edit and View Permission of its own. The web and email interfaces also define:
These are hooked into the default Roles:
And finally, the "admin" user gets the "Admin" Role, and the "anonymous" user gets "Anonymous" assigned when the tracker is installed.
For the "User" Role, the "classic" tracker defines:
And the "Anonymous" Role is defined as:
Put together, these settings appear in the tracker's schema.py file:
# # TRACKER SECURITY SETTINGS # # See the configuration and customisation document for information # about security setup. # # REGULAR USERS # # Give the regular users access to the web and email interface db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'Web Access') db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'Email Access') # Assign the access and edit Permissions for issue, file and message # to regular users now for cl in 'issue', 'file', 'msg', 'query', 'keyword': db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'View', cl) db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'Edit', cl) db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'Create', cl) for cl in 'priority', 'status': db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'View', cl) # May users view other user information? Comment these lines out # if you don't want them to db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'View', 'user') # Users should be able to edit their own details -- this permission # is limited to only the situation where the Viewed or Edited item # is their own. def own_record(db, userid, itemid): '''Determine whether the userid matches the item being accessed.''' return userid == itemid p = db.security.addPermission(name='View', klass='user', check=own_record, description="User is allowed to view their own user details") db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', p) p = db.security.addPermission(name='Edit', klass='user', check=own_record, description="User is allowed to edit their own user details") db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', p) # # ANONYMOUS USER PERMISSIONS # # Let anonymous users access the web interface. Note that almost all # trackers will need this Permission. The only situation where it's not # required is in a tracker that uses an HTTP Basic Authenticated front-end. db.security.addPermissionToRole('Anonymous', 'Web Access') # Let anonymous users access the email interface (note that this implies # that they will be registered automatically, hence they will need the # "Create" user Permission below) # This is disabled by default to stop spam from auto-registering users on # public trackers. #db.security.addPermissionToRole('Anonymous', 'Email Access') # Assign the appropriate permissions to the anonymous user's Anonymous # Role. Choices here are: # - Allow anonymous users to register db.security.addPermissionToRole('Anonymous', 'Create', 'user') # Allow anonymous users access to view issues (and the related, linked # information) for cl in 'issue', 'file', 'msg', 'keyword', 'priority', 'status': db.security.addPermissionToRole('Anonymous', 'View', cl) # [OPTIONAL] # Allow anonymous users access to create or edit "issue" items (and the # related file and message items) #for cl in 'issue', 'file', 'msg': # db.security.addPermissionToRole('Anonymous', 'Create', cl) # db.security.addPermissionToRole('Anonymous', 'Edit', cl)
Permissions are automatically checked when information is rendered through the web. This includes:
New users are assigned the Roles defined in the config file as:
The users may only edit their issues example shows customisation of these parameters.
You may alter the configuration variables to change the Role that new web or email users get, for example to not give them access to the web interface if they register through email.
You may use the roundup-admin "security" command to display the current Role and Permission configuration in your tracker.
When adding a new Permission, you will need to:
add it to your tracker's schema.py so it is created, using security.addPermission, for example:
self.security.addPermission(name="View", klass='frozzle', description="User is allowed to access frozzles")
will set up a new "View" permission on the Class "frozzle".
enable it for the Roles that should have it (verify with "roundup-admin security")
add it to the relevant HTML interface templates
add it to the appropriate xxxPermission methods on in your tracker interfaces module
The addPermission method takes a couple of optional parameters:
See the examples section for longer examples of customisation.
Create a new Permission called "Closer" for the "issue" class. Create a new Role "Manager" which has that Permission, and assign that to the appropriate users. In your web interface, only display the "resolved" issue state option when the user has the "Closer" Permissions. Enforce the Permission with an auditor. This is very similar to the previous example, except that the web interface check would look like:
<option tal:condition="python:request.user.hasPermission('Closer')" value="resolved">Resolved</option>
Create a new Role called "User Admin" which has the Permission for editing users:
db.security.addRole(name='User Admin', description='Managing users') p = db.security.getPermission('Edit', 'user') db.security.addPermissionToRole('User Admin', p)
and assign the Role to the users who need the permission.
The web interface is provided by the roundup.cgi.client module and is used by roundup.cgi, roundup-server and ZRoundup (ZRoundup is broken, until further notice). In all cases, we determine which tracker is being accessed (the first part of the URL path inside the scope of the CGI handler) and pass control on to the roundup.cgi.client.Client class - which handles the rest of the access through its main() method. This means that you can do pretty much anything you want as a web interface to your tracker.
If you choose to change the tracker schema you will need to ensure the web interface knows about it:
The basic processing of a web request proceeds as follows:
In some situations, exceptions occur:
HTTP Redirect (generally raised by an action)
here we serve up a FileClass "content" property
here we serve up a file from the tracker "html" directory
here the action is cancelled, the request is rendered and an error message is displayed indicating that permission was not granted for the action to take place
this exception percolates up to the CGI interface that called the client
To determine the "context" of a request, we look at the URL and the special request variable @template. The URL path after the tracker identifier is examined. Typical URL paths look like:
where the "tracker identifier" is "tracker" in the above cases. That means we're looking at "issue", "issue1", "@@file/style.css", "file1" and "file1/kitten.png" in the cases above. The path is generally only one entry long - longer paths are handled differently.
Both b. and e. stop before we bother to determine the template we're going to use. That's because they don't actually use templates.
The template used is specified by the @template CGI variable, which defaults to:
The "home" context is special because it allows you to add templated pages to your tracker that don't rely on a class or item (ie. an issues list or specific issue).
Let's say you wish to add frames to control the layout of your tracker's interface. You'd probably have:
A top-level frameset page. This page probably wouldn't be templated, so it could be served as a static file (see serving static content)
A sidebar frame that is templated. Let's call this page "home.navigation.html" in your tracker's "html" directory. To load that page up, you use the URL:
<tracker url>/home?@template=navigation
See the previous section determining web context where it describes @@file paths.
When a user requests a web page, they may optionally also request for an action to take place. As described in how requests are processed, the action is performed before the requested page is generated. Actions are triggered by using a @action CGI variable, where the value is one of:
Mangle some of the form variables:
Each of the actions is implemented by a corresponding *XxxAction* (where "Xxx" is the name of the action) class in the roundup.cgi.actions module. These classes are registered with roundup.cgi.client.Client. If you need to define new actions, you may add them there (see defining new web actions).
Each action class also has a *permission* method which determines whether the action is permissible given the current user. The base permission checks for each action are:
Item properties and their values are edited with html FORM variables and their values. You can:
These operations will only take place if the form action (the @action variable) is "edit" or "new".
In the following, <bracketed> values are variable, "@" may be either ":" or "@", and other text "required" is fixed.
Two special form variables are used to specify user language preferences:
Most properties are specified as form variables:
Designators name a specific item of a class.
Once we have determined the "propname", we look at it to see if it's special:
The associated form value is a comma-separated list of property names that must be specified when the form is submitted for the edit operation to succeed.
When the <designator> is missing, the properties are for the current context item. When <designator> is present, they are for the item specified by <designator>.
The "@required" specifier must come before any of the properties it refers to are assigned in the form.
The value of the form variable is converted appropriately, depending on the type of the property.
For a Link('klass') property, the form value is a single key for 'klass', where the key field is specified in schema.py.
For a Multilink('klass') property, the form value is a comma-separated list of keys for 'klass', where the key field is specified in schema.py.
Note that for simple-form-variables specifiying Link and Multilink properties, the linked-to class must have a key field.
For a String() property specifying a filename, the file named by the form value is uploaded. This means we try to set additional properties "filename" and "type" (if they are valid for the class). Otherwise, the property is set to the form value.
For Date(), Interval(), Boolean(), and Number() properties, the form value is converted to the appropriate
Any of the form variables may be prefixed with a classname or designator.
Two special form values are supported for backwards compatibility:
This is equivalent to:
@link@messages=msg-1 msg-1@content=value
except that in addition, the "author" and "date" properties of "msg-1" are set to the userid of the submitter, and the current time, respectively.
This is equivalent to:
@link@files=file-1 file-1@content=value
The String content value is handled as described above for file uploads.
If both the "@note" and "@file" form variables are specified, the action:
@link@msg-1@files=file-1
is also performed.
We also check that FileClass items have a "content" property with actual content, otherwise we remove them from all_props before returning.
The default templates are html4 compliant. If you wish to change them to be xhtml compliant, you'll need to change the html_version configuration variable in config.ini to 'xhtml' instead of 'html4'.
Most customisation of the web view can be done by modifying the templates in the tracker 'html' directory. There are several types of files in there. The minimal template includes:
The classic template has a number of additional templates.
Remember that you can create any template extension you want to, so if you just want to play around with the templating for new issues, you can copy the current "issue.item" template to "issue.test", and then access the test template using the "@template" URL argument:
http://your.tracker.example/tracker/issue?@template=test
and it won't affect your users using the "issue.item" template.
Roundup's templates consist of special attributes on the HTML tags. These attributes form the Template Attribute Language, or TAL. The basic TAL commands are:
Define a new variable that is local to this tag and its contents. For example:
<html tal:define="title request/description"> <head><title tal:content="title"></title></head> </html>
In this example, the variable "title" is defined as the result of the expression "request/description". The "tal:content" command inside the <html> tag may then use the "title" variable.
Only keep this tag and its contents if the expression is true. For example:
<p tal:condition="python:request.user.hasPermission('View', 'issue')"> Display some issue information. </p>
In the example, the <p> tag and its contents are only displayed if the user has the "View" permission for issues. We consider the number zero, a blank string, an empty list, and the built-in variable nothing to be false values. Nearly every other value is true, including non-zero numbers, and strings with anything in them (even spaces!).
Repeat this tag and its contents for each element of the sequence that the expression returns, defining a new local variable and a special "repeat" variable for each element. For example:
<tr tal:repeat="u user/list"> <td tal:content="u/id"></td> <td tal:content="u/username"></td> <td tal:content="u/realname"></td> </tr>
The example would iterate over the sequence of users returned by "user/list" and define the local variable "u" for each entry. Using the repeat command creates a new variable called "repeat" which you may access to gather information about the iteration. See the section below on the repeat variable.
Replace this tag with the result of the expression. For example:
<span tal:replace="request/user/realname" />
The example would replace the <span> tag and its contents with the user's realname. If the user's realname was "Bruce", then the resultant output would be "Bruce".
Replace the contents of this tag with the result of the expression. For example:
<span tal:content="request/user/realname">user's name appears here </span>
The example would replace the contents of the <span> tag with the user's realname. If the user's realname was "Bruce" then the resultant output would be "<span>Bruce</span>".
Set attributes on this tag to the results of expressions. For example:
<a tal:attributes="href string:user${request/user/id}">My Details</a>
In the example, the "href" attribute of the <a> tag is set to the value of the "string:user${request/user/id}" expression, which will be something like "user123".
Remove this tag (but not its contents) if the expression is true. For example:
<span tal:omit-tag="python:1">Hello, world!</span>
would result in output of:
Hello, world!
Note that the commands on a given tag are evaulated in the order above, so define comes before condition, and so on.
Additionally, you may include tags such as <tal:block>, which are removed from output. Its content is kept, but the tag itself is not (so don't go using any "tal:attributes" commands on it). This is useful for making arbitrary blocks of HTML conditional or repeatable (very handy for repeating multiple table rows, which would othewise require an illegal tag placement to effect the repeat).
Templating Expressions are covered by Template Attribute Language Expression Syntax, or TALES. The expressions you may use in the attribute values may be one of the following forms:
These are object attribute / item accesses. Roughly speaking, the path item/status/checklist is broken into parts item, status and checklist. The item part is the root of the expression. We then look for a status attribute on item, or failing that, a status item (as in item['status']). If that fails, the path expression fails. When we get to the end, the object we're left with is evaluated to get a string - if it is a method, it is called; if it is an object, it is stringified. Path expressions may have an optional path: prefix, but they are the default expression type, so it's not necessary.
If an expression evaluates to default, then the expression is "cancelled" - whatever HTML already exists in the template will remain (tag content in the case of tal:content, attributes in the case of tal:attributes).
If an expression evaluates to nothing then the target of the expression is removed (tag content in the case of tal:content, attributes in the case of tal:attributes and the tag itself in the case of tal:replace).
If an element in the path may not exist, then you can use the | operator in the expression to provide an alternative. So, the expression request/form/foo/value | default would simply leave the current HTML in place if the "foo" form variable doesn't exist.
You may use the python function path, as in path("item/status"), to embed path expressions in Python expressions.
Modifiers:
Macros are used in Roundup to save us from repeating the same common page stuctures over and over. The most common (and probably only) macro you'll use is the "icing" macro defined in the "page" template.
Macros are generated and used inside your templates using special attributes similar to the basic templating actions. In this case, though, the attributes belong to the Macro Expansion Template Attribute Language, or METAL. The macro commands are:
Define that the tag and its contents are now a macro that may be inserted into other templates using the use-macro command. For example:
<html metal:define-macro="page"> ... </html>
defines a macro called "page" using the <html> tag and its contents. Once defined, macros are stored on the template they're defined on in the macros attribute. You can access them later on through the templates variable, eg. the most common templates/page/macros/icing to access the "page" macro of the "page" template.
Use a macro, which is identified by the path expression (see above). This will replace the current tag with the identified macro contents. For example:
<tal:block metal:use-macro="templates/page/macros/icing"> ... </tal:block> will replace the tag and its contents with the "page" macro of the "page" template.
To define dynamic parts of the macro, you define "slots" which may be filled when the macro is used with a use-macro command. For example, the templates/page/macros/icing macro defines a slot like so:
<title metal:define-slot="head_title">title goes here</title>
In your use-macro command, you may now use a fill-slot command like this:
<title metal:fill-slot="head_title">My Title</title>
where the tag that fills the slot completely replaces the one defined as the slot in the macro.
Note that you may not mix METAL and TAL commands on the same tag, but TAL commands may be used freely inside METAL-using tags (so your fill-slots tags may have all manner of TAL inside them).
This is implemented by roundup.cgi.templating.RoundupPageTemplate
The following variables are available to templates.
This is a special variable - if an expression evaluates to this, then the tag (in the case of a tal:replace), its contents (in the case of tal:content) or some attributes (in the case of tal:attributes) will not appear in the the output. So, for example:
<span tal:attributes="class nothing">Hello, World!</span>
would result in:
<span>Hello, World!</span>
Also a special variable - if an expression evaluates to this, then the existing HTML in the template will not be replaced or removed, it will remain. So:
<span tal:replace="default">Hello, World!</span>
would result in:
<span>Hello, World!</span>
Internationalization service, providing two string translation methods:
Like gettext(), but consider plural forms. If a translation is found, apply the plural formula to number, and return the resulting message (some languages have more than two plural forms). If no translation is found, return singular if number is 1; return plural otherwise.
This function requires python2.3; in earlier python versions may not work as expected.
The context variable is one of three things based on the current context (see determining web context for how we figure this out):
If the context is not None, we can access the properties of the class or item. The only real difference between cases 2 and 3 above are:
This is implemented by the roundup.cgi.templating.HTMLClass class.
This wrapper object provides access to a hyperb class. It is used primarily in both index view and new item views, but it's also usable anywhere else that you wish to access information about a class, or the items of a class, when you don't have a specific item of that class in mind.
We allow access to properties. There will be no "id" property. The value accessed through the property will be the current value of the same name from the CGI form.
There are several methods available on these wrapper objects:
Method | Description |
---|---|
properties | return a hyperdb property wrapper for all of this class's properties. |
list | lists all of the active (not retired) items in the class. |
csv | return the items of this class as a chunk of CSV text. |
propnames | lists the names of the properties of this class. |
filter | lists of items from this class, filtered and sorted. Two options are avaible for sorting:
eg. All issues with a priority of "1" with messages added in the last week, sorted by activity date: issue.filter(filterspec={"priority": "1", 'messages.creation' : '.-1w;'}, sort=[('activity', '+')]) |
filter_sql | Only in SQL backends Lists the items that match the SQL provided. The SQL is a complete "select" statement. The SQL select must include the item id as the first column. This function does not filter out retired items, add on a where clause "__retired__ <> 1" if you don't want retired nodes. |
classhelp | display a link to a javascript popup containing this class' "help" template. This generates a link to a popup window which displays the properties indicated by "properties" of the class named by "classname". The "properties" should be a comma-separated list (eg. 'id,name,description'). Properties defaults to all the properties of a class (excluding id, creator, created and activity). You may optionally override the "label" displayed, the "width", the "height", the number of items per page ("pagesize") and the field on which the list is sorted ("sort"). With the "filter" arg it is possible to specify a filter for which items are supposed to be displayed. It has to be of the format "<field>=<values>;<field>=<values>;...". The popup window will be resizable and scrollable. If the "property" arg is given, it's passed through to the javascript help_window function. This allows updating of a property in the calling HTML page. If the "form" arg is given, it's passed through to the javascript help_window function - it's the name of the form the "property" belongs to. |
submit | generate a submit button (and action hidden element) |
renderWith | render this class with the given template. |
history | returns 'New node - no history' :) |
is_edit_ok | is the user allowed to Edit the current class? |
is_view_ok | is the user allowed to View the current class? |
Note that if you have a property of the same name as one of the above methods, you'll need to access it using a python "item access" expression. For example:
python:context['list']
will access the "list" property, rather than the list method.
This is implemented by the roundup.cgi.templating.HTMLItem class.
This wrapper object provides access to a hyperb item.
We allow access to properties. There will be no "id" property. The value accessed through the property will be the current value of the same name from the CGI form.
There are several methods available on these wrapper objects:
Method | Description |
---|---|
submit | generate a submit button (and action hidden element) |
journal | return the journal of the current item (not implemented) |
history | render the journal of the current item as HTML |
renderQueryForm | specific to the "query" class - render the search form for the query |
hasPermission | specific to the "user" class - determine whether the user has a Permission. The signature is: hasPermission(self, permission, [classname=], [property=], [itemid=]) where the classname defaults to the current context. |
hasRole | specific to the "user" class - determine whether the user has a Role. The signature is: hasRole(self, rolename) |
is_edit_ok | is the user allowed to Edit the current item? |
is_view_ok | is the user allowed to View the current item? |
is_retired | is the item retired? |
download_url | generate a url-quoted link for download of FileClass item contents (ie. file<id>/<name>) |
copy_url | generate a url-quoted link for creating a copy of this item. By default, the copy will acquire all properties of the current item except for messages and files. This can be overridden by passing exclude argument which contains a list (or any iterable) of property names that shall not be copied. Database-driven properties like id or activity cannot be copied. |
Note that if you have a property of the same name as one of the above methods, you'll need to access it using a python "item access" expression. For example:
python:context['journal']
will access the "journal" property, rather than the journal method.
This is implemented by subclasses of the roundup.cgi.templating.HTMLProperty class (HTMLStringProperty, HTMLNumberProperty, and so on).
This wrapper object provides access to a single property of a class. Its value may be either:
The property wrapper has some useful attributes:
Attribute | Description |
---|---|
_name | the name of the property |
_value | the value of the property if any - this is the actual value retrieved from the hyperdb for this property |
There are several methods available on these wrapper objects:
Method | Description |
---|---|
plain | render a "plain" representation of the property. This method may take two arguments:
|
hyperlinked | The same as msg.content.plain(hyperlink=1), but nicer: "structure msg/content/hyperlinked" |
field | render an appropriate form edit field for the property - for most types this is a text entry box, but for Booleans it's a tri-state yes/no/neither selection. This method may take some arguments:
|
stext | only on String properties - render the value of the property as StructuredText (requires the StructureText module to be installed separately) |
multiline | only on String properties - render a multiline form edit field for the property |
only on String properties - render the value of the property as an obscured email address | |
confirm | only on Password properties - render a second form edit field for the property, used for confirmation that the user typed the password correctly. Generates a field with name "name:confirm". |
now | only on Date properties - return the current date as a new property |
reldate | only on Date properties - render the interval between the date and now |
local | only on Date properties - return this date as a new property with some timezone offset, for example: python:context.creation.local(10) will render the date with a +10 hour offset. |
pretty | Date properties - render the date as "dd Mon YYYY" (eg. "19 Mar 2004"). Takes an optional format argument, for example: python:context.activity.pretty('%Y-%m-%d') Will format as "2004-03-19" instead. Interval properties - render the interval in a pretty format (eg. "yesterday"). The format arguments are those used in the standard strftime call (see the Python Library Reference: time module) |
popcal | Generate a link to a popup calendar which may be used to edit the date field, for example: <span tal:replace="structure context/due/popcal" /> you still need to include the field for the property, so typically you'd have: <span tal:replace="structure context/due/field" /> <span tal:replace="structure context/due/popcal" /> |
menu | only on Link and Multilink properties - render a form select list for this property. Takes a number of optional arguments
The remaining keyword arguments are used as conditions for filtering the items in the list - they're passed as the "filterspec" argument to a Class.filter() call. For example: <span tal:replace="structure context/status/menu" /> <span tal:replace="python:context.status.menu(order='+name", value='chatting', filterspec={'status': '1,2,3,4'}" /> |
sorted | only on Multilink properties - produce a list of the linked items sorted by some property, for example: python:context.files.sorted('creation') Will list the files by upload date. |
reverse | only on Multilink properties - produce a list of the linked items in reverse order |
isset | returns True if the property has been set to a value |
All of the above functions perform checks for permissions required to display or edit the data they are manipulating. The simplest case is editing an issue title. Including the expression:
context/title/field
Will present the user with an edit field, if they have edit permission. If not, then they will be presented with a static display if they have view permission. If they don't even have view permission, then an error message is raised, preventing the display of the page, indicating that they don't have permission to view the information.
This is implemented by the roundup.cgi.templating.HTMLRequest class.
The request variable is packed with information about the current request.
Variable | Holds |
---|---|
form | the CGI form as a cgi.FieldStorage |
env | the CGI environment variables |
base | the base URL for this tracker |
user | a HTMLUser instance for this user |
classname | the current classname (possibly None) |
template | the current template (suffix, also possibly None) |
form | the current CGI form variables in a FieldStorage |
Index page specific variables (indexing arguments)
Variable | Holds |
---|---|
columns | dictionary of the columns to display in an index page |
show | a convenience access to columns - request/show/colname will be true if the columns should be displayed, false otherwise |
sort | index sort columns [(direction, column name)] |
group | index grouping properties [(direction, column name)] |
filter | properties to filter the index on |
filterspec | values to filter the index on (property=value, eg priority=1 or messages.author=42 |
search_text | text to perform a full-text search on for an index |
There are several methods available on the request variable:
Method | Description |
---|---|
description | render a description of the request - handle for the page title |
indexargs_form | render the current index args as form elements |
indexargs_url | render the current index args as a URL |
base_javascript | render some javascript that is used by other components of the templating |
batch | run the current index args through a filter and return a list of items (see hyperdb item wrapper, and batching) |
The form variable is a bit special because it's actually a python FieldStorage object. That means that you have two ways to access its contents. For example, to look up the CGI form value for the variable "name", use the path expression:
request/form/name/value
or the python expression:
python:request.form['name'].value
Note the "item" access used in the python case, and also note the explicit "value" attribute we have to access. That's because the form variables are stored as MiniFieldStorages. If there's more than one "name" value in the form, then the above will break since request/form/name is actually a list of MiniFieldStorages. So it's best to know beforehand what you're dealing with.
This is implemented by the roundup.cgi.templating.HTMLDatabase class.
Allows access to all hyperdb classes as attributes of this variable. If you want access to the "user" class, for example, you would use:
db/user python:db.user
Also, the current id of the current user is available as db.getuid(). This isn't so useful in templates (where you have request/user), but it can be useful in detectors or interfaces.
The access results in a hyperdb class wrapper.
This is implemented by the roundup.cgi.templating.Templates class.
This variable doesn't have any useful methods defined. It supports being used in expressions to access the templates, and consequently the template macros. You may access the templates using the following path expression:
templates/name
or the python expression:
templates[name]
where "name" is the name of the template you wish to access. The template has one useful attribute, namely "macros". To access a specific macro (called "macro_name"), use the path expression:
templates/name/macros/macro_name
or the python expression:
templates[name].macros[macro_name]
The repeat variable holds an entry for each active iteration. That is, if you have a tal:repeat="user db/users" command, then there will be a repeat variable entry called "user". This may be accessed as either:
repeat/user python:repeat['user']
The "user" entry has a number of methods available for information:
Method | Description |
---|---|
first | True if the current item is the first in the sequence. |
last | True if the current item is the last in the sequence. |
even | True if the current item is an even item in the sequence. |
odd | True if the current item is an odd item in the sequence. |
number | Current position in the sequence, starting from 1. |
letter | Current position in the sequence as a letter, a through z, then aa through zz, and so on. |
Letter | Same as letter(), except uppercase. |
roman | Current position in the sequence as lowercase roman numerals. |
Roman | Same as roman(), except uppercase. |
This is implemented by the roundup.cgi.templating.TemplatingUtils class, but it may be extended as described below.
Method | Description |
---|---|
Batch | return a batch object using the supplied list |
url_quote | quote some text as safe for a URL (ie. space, %, ...) |
html_quote | quote some text as safe in HTML (ie. <, >, ...) |
html_calendar | renders an HTML calendar used by the _generic.calendar.html template (itself invoked by the popupCalendar DateHTMLProperty method |
You may add additional utility methods by writing them in your tracker extensions directory and registering them with the templating system using instance.registerUtil (see adding a time log to your issues for an example of this).
Use Batch to turn a list of items, or item ids of a given class, into a series of batches. Its usage is:
python:utils.Batch(sequence, size, start, end=0, orphan=0, overlap=0)
or, to get the current index batch:
request/batch
The parameters are:
Parameter | Usage |
---|---|
sequence | a list of HTMLItems |
size | how big to make the sequence. |
start | where to start (0-indexed) in the sequence. |
end | where to end (0-indexed) in the sequence. |
orphan | if the next batch would contain less items than this value, then it is combined with this batch |
overlap | the number of items shared between adjacent batches |
All of the parameters are assigned as attributes on the batch object. In addition, it has several more attributes:
Attribute | Description |
---|---|
start | indicates the start index of the batch. Unlike the argument, is a 1-based index (I know, lame) |
first | indicates the start index of the batch as a 0-based index |
length | the actual number of elements in the batch |
sequence_length | the length of the original, unbatched, sequence. |
And several methods:
Method | Description |
---|---|
previous | returns a new Batch with the previous batch settings |
next | returns a new Batch with the next batch settings |
propchanged | detect if the named property changed on the current item when compared to the last item |
An example of batching:
<table class="otherinfo"> <tr><th colspan="4" class="header">Existing Keywords</th></tr> <tr tal:define="keywords db/keyword/list" tal:repeat="start python:range(0, len(keywords), 4)"> <td tal:define="batch python:utils.Batch(keywords, 4, start)" tal:repeat="keyword batch" tal:content="keyword/name"> keyword here</td> </tr> </table>
... which will produce a table with four columns containing the items of the "keyword" class (well, their "name" anyway).
Properties appear in the user interface in three contexts: in indices, in editors, and as search arguments. For each type of property, there are several display possibilities. For example, in an index view, a string property may just be printed as a plain string, but in an editor view, that property may be displayed in an editable field.
This is one of the class context views. It is also the default view for classes. The template used is "classname.index".
An index view specifier (URL fragment) looks like this (whitespace has been added for clarity):
/issue?status=unread,in-progress,resolved& topic=security,ui& @group=priority,-status& @sort=-activity& @filters=status,topic& @columns=title,status,fixer
The index view is determined by two parts of the specifier: the layout part and the filter part. The layout part consists of the query parameters that begin with colons, and it determines the way that the properties of selected items are displayed. The filter part consists of all the other query parameters, and it determines the criteria by which items are selected for display. The filter part is interactively manipulated with the form widgets displayed in the filter section. The layout part is interactively manipulated by clicking on the column headings in the table.
The filter part selects the union of the sets of items with values matching any specified Link properties and the intersection of the sets of items with values matching any specified Multilink properties.
The example specifies an index of "issue" items. Only items with a "status" of either "unread" or "in-progress" or "resolved" are displayed, and only items with "topic" values including both "security" and "ui" are displayed. The items are grouped by priority arranged in ascending order and in descending order by status; and within groups, sorted by activity, arranged in descending order. The filter section shows filters for the "status" and "topic" properties, and the table includes columns for the "title", "status", and "fixer" properties.
Argument | Description |
---|---|
@sort | sort by prop name, optionally preceeded with '-' to give descending or nothing for ascending sorting. Several properties can be specified delimited with comma. Internally a search-page using several sort properties may use @sort0, @sort1 etc. with option @sortdir0, @sortdir1 etc. for the direction of sorting (a non-empty value of sortdir0 specifies reverse order). |
@group | group by prop name, optionally preceeded with '-' or to sort in descending or nothing for ascending order. Several properties can be specified delimited with comma. Internally a search-page using several grouping properties may use @group0, @group1 etc. with option @groupdir0, @groupdir1 etc. for the direction of grouping (a non-empty value of groupdir0 specifies reverse order). |
@columns | selects the columns that should be displayed. Default is all. |
@filter | indicates which properties are being used in filtering. Default is none. |
propname | selects the values the item properties given by propname must have (very basic search/filter). |
@search_text | if supplied, performs a full-text search (message bodies, issue titles, etc) |
Note
if you add a new column to the @columns form variable potentials then you will need to add the column to the appropriate index views template so that it is actually displayed.
This is one of the class context views. The template used is typically "classname.search". The form on this page should have "search" as its @action variable. The "search" action:
The search page should lay out any fields that you wish to allow the user to search on. If your schema contains a large number of properties, you should be wary of making all of those properties available for searching, as this can cause confusion. If the additional properties are Strings, consider having their value indexed, and then they will be searchable using the full text indexed search. This is both faster, and more useful for the end user.
If the search view does specify the "search" @action, then it may also provide an additional argument:
Argument | Description |
---|---|
@query_name | if supplied, the index parameters (including @search_text) will be saved off as a the query item and registered against the user's queries property. Note that the classic template schema has this ability, but the minimal template schema does not. |
The basic view of a hyperdb item is provided by the "classname.item" template. It generally has three sections; an "editor", a "spool" and a "history" section.
The editor section is used to manipulate the item - it may be a static display if the user doesn't have permission to edit the item.
Here's an example of a basic editor template (this is the default "classic" template issue item edit form - from the "issue.item.html" template):
<table class="form"> <tr> <th>Title</th> <td colspan="3" tal:content="structure python:context.title.field(size=60)">title</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Priority</th> <td tal:content="structure context/priority/menu">priority</td> <th>Status</th> <td tal:content="structure context/status/menu">status</td> </tr> <tr> <th>Superseder</th> <td> <span tal:replace="structure python:context.superseder.field(showid=1, size=20)" /> <span tal:replace="structure python:db.issue.classhelp('id,title')" /> <span tal:condition="context/superseder"> <br>View: <span tal:replace="structure python:context.superseder.link(showid=1)" /> </span> </td> <th>Nosy List</th> <td> <span tal:replace="structure context/nosy/field" /> <span tal:replace="structure python:db.user.classhelp('username,realname,address,phone')" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <th>Assigned To</th> <td tal:content="structure context/assignedto/menu"> assignedto menu </td> <td> </td> <td> </td> </tr> <tr> <th>Change Note</th> <td colspan="3"> <textarea name=":note" wrap="hard" rows="5" cols="60"></textarea> </td> </tr> <tr> <th>File</th> <td colspan="3"><input type="file" name=":file" size="40"></td> </tr> <tr> <td> </td> <td colspan="3" tal:content="structure context/submit"> submit button will go here </td> </tr> </table>
When a change is submitted, the system automatically generates a message describing the changed properties. As shown in the example, the editor template can use the ":note" and ":file" fields, which are added to the standard changenote message generated by Roundup.
We have a number of ways to pull properties out of the form in order to meet the various needs of:
In the following, <bracketed> values are variable, ":" may be one of ":" or "@", and other text ("required") is fixed.
Properties are specified as form variables:
Once we have determined the "propname", we check to see if it is one of the special form values:
Any of the form variables may be prefixed with a classname or designator.
Two special form values are supported for backwards compatibility:
The spool section lists related information like the messages and files of an issue.
TODO
The final section displayed is the history of the item - its database journal. This is generally generated with the template:
<tal:block tal:replace="structure context/history" />
To be done:
The actual history entries of the item may be accessed for manual templating through the "journal" method of the item:
<tal:block tal:repeat="entry context/journal"> a journal entry </tal:block>
where each journal entry is an HTMLJournalEntry.
You may define new actions to be triggered by the @action form variable. These are added to the tracker extensions directory and registered using instance.registerAction.
All the existing Actions are defined in roundup.cgi.actions.
Adding action classes takes three steps; first you define the new action class, then you register the action class with the cgi interface so it may be triggered by the @action form variable. Finally you use the new action in your HTML form.
See "setting up a "wizard" (or "druid") for controlled adding of issues" for an example.
Create a new action class in your tracker's extensions directory, for example myaction.py:
from roundup.cgi.actions import Action class MyAction(Action): def handle(self): ''' Perform some action. No return value is required. '''
The self.client attribute is an instance of roundup.cgi.client.Client. See the docstring of that class for details of what it can do.
The method will typically check the self.form variable's contents. It may then:
The class is now written, but isn't available to the user until you register it with the following code appended to your myaction.py file:
def init(instance): instance.registerAction('myaction', myActionClass)
This maps the action name "myaction" to the action class we defined.
In your HTML form, add a hidden form element like so:
<input type="hidden" name="@action" value="myaction">
where "myaction" is the name you registered in the previous step.
Actions generally perform some database manipulation and then pass control on to the rendering of a template in the current context (see Determining web context for how that works.) Some actions will want to generate the actual content returned to the user. Action methods may return their own content string to be displayed to the user, overriding the templating step. In this situation, we assume that the content is HTML by default. You may override the content type indicated to the user by calling setHeader:
self.client.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/csv')
This example indicates that the value sent back to the user is actually comma-separated value content (eg. something to be loaded into a spreadsheet or database).
The web interface uses UTF-8 default. It may be overridden in both forms and a browser cookie.
In both cases, the value is a valid charset name (eg. utf-8 or kio8-r).
Inside Roundup, all strings are stored and processed in utf-8. Unfortunately, some older browsers do not work properly with utf-8-encoded pages (e.g. Netscape Navigator 4 displays wrong characters in form fields). This version allows one to change the character set for http transfers. To do so, you may add the following code to your page.html template:
<tal:block define="uri string:${request/base}${request/env/PATH_INFO}"> <a tal:attributes="href python:request.indexargs_url(uri, {'@charset':'utf-8'})">utf-8</a> <a tal:attributes="href python:request.indexargs_url(uri, {'@charset':'koi8-r'})">koi8-r</a> </tal:block>
(substitute koi8-r with appropriate charset for your language). Charset preference is kept in the browser cookie roundup_charset.
meta http-equiv lines added to the tracker templates in version 0.6.0 should be changed to include actual character set name:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" tal:attributes="content string:text/html;; charset=${request/client/charset}" />
The charset is also sent in the http header.
The following examples illustrate ways to change the information stored in the database.
This example shows how to add a simple field (a due date) to the default classic schema. It does not add any additional behaviour, such as enforcing the due date, or causing automatic actions to fire if the due date passes.
You add new fields by editing the schema.py file in you tracker's home. Schema changes are automatically applied to the database on the next tracker access (note that roundup-server would need to be restarted as it caches the schema).
Modify the schema.py:
issue = IssueClass(db, "issue", assignedto=Link("user"), topic=Multilink("keyword"), priority=Link("priority"), status=Link("status"), due_date=Date())
Add an edit field to the issue.item.html template:
<tr> <th>Due Date</th> <td tal:content="structure context/due_date/field" /> </tr>
If you want to show only the date part of due_date then do this instead:
<tr> <th>Due Date</th> <td tal:content="structure python:context.due_date.field(format='%Y-%m-%d')" /> </tr>
Add the property to the issue.index.html page:
(in the heading row) <th tal:condition="request/show/due_date">Due Date</th> (in the data row) <td tal:condition="request/show/due_date" tal:content="i/due_date" />
If you want format control of the display of the due date you can enter the following in the data row to show only the actual due date:
<td tal:condition="request/show/due_date" tal:content="python:i.due_date.pretty('%Y-%m-%d')"> </td>
Add the property to the issue.search.html page:
<tr tal:define="name string:due_date"> <th i18n:translate="">Due Date:</th> <td metal:use-macro="search_input"></td> <td metal:use-macro="column_input"></td> <td metal:use-macro="sort_input"></td> <td metal:use-macro="group_input"></td> </tr>
If you wish for the due date to appear in the standard views listed in the sidebar of the web interface then you'll need to add "due_date" to the columns and columns_showall lists in your page.html:
columns string:id,activity,due_date,title,creator,status; columns_showall string:id,activity,due_date,title,creator,assignedto,status;
This example shows how to add a new constrained property (i.e. a selection of distinct values) to your tracker.
To make the classic schema of Roundup useful as a TODO tracking system for a group of systems administrators, it needs an extra data field per issue: a category.
This would let sysadmins quickly list all TODOs in their particular area of interest without having to do complex queries, and without relying on the spelling capabilities of other sysadmins (a losing proposition at best).
This is the easiest part of the change. The category would just be a plain string, nothing fancy. To change what is in the database you need to add some lines to the schema.py file of your tracker instance. Under the comment:
# add any additional database schema configuration here
add:
category = Class(db, "category", name=String()) category.setkey("name")
Here we are setting up a chunk of the database which we are calling "category". It contains a string, which we are refering to as "name" for lack of a more imaginative title. (Since "name" is one of the properties that Roundup looks for on items if you do not set a key for them, it's probably a good idea to stick with it for new classes if at all appropriate.) Then we are setting the key of this chunk of the database to be that "name". This is equivalent to an index for database types. This also means that there can only be one category with a given name.
Adding the above lines allows us to create categories, but they're not tied to the issues that we are going to be creating. It's just a list of categories off on its own, which isn't much use. We need to link it in with the issues. To do that, find the lines in schema.py which set up the "issue" class, and then add a link to the category:
issue = IssueClass(db, "issue", ... , category=Multilink("category"), ... )
The Multilink() means that each issue can have many categories. If you were adding something with a one-to-one relationship to issues (such as the "assignedto" property), use Link() instead.
That is all you need to do to change the schema. The rest of the effort is fiddling around so you can actually use the new category.
If you haven't initialised the database with the roundup-admin "initialise" command, then you can add the following to the tracker initial_data.py under the comment:
# add any additional database creation steps here - but only if you # haven't initialised the database with the admin "initialise" command
Add:
category = db.getclass('category') category.create(name="scipy") category.create(name="chaco") category.create(name="weave")
If the database has already been initalised, then you need to use the roundup-admin tool:
% roundup-admin -i <tracker home> Roundup <version> ready for input. Type "help" for help. roundup> create category name=scipy 1 roundup> create category name=chaco 2 roundup> create category name=weave 3 roundup> exit... There are unsaved changes. Commit them (y/N)? y
By default only the admin user can look at and change objects. This doesn't suit us, as we want any user to be able to create new categories as required, and obviously everyone needs to be able to view the categories of issues for it to be useful.
We therefore need to change the security of the category objects. This is also done in schema.py.
There are currently two loops which set up permissions and then assign them to various roles. Simply add the new "category" to both lists:
# Assign the access and edit permissions for issue, file and message # to regular users now for cl in 'issue', 'file', 'msg', 'category': p = db.security.getPermission('View', cl) db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'View', cl) db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'Edit', cl) db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'Create', cl)
These lines assign the "View" and "Edit" Permissions to the "User" role, so that normal users can view and edit "category" objects.
This is all the work that needs to be done for the database. It will store categories, and let users view and edit them. Now on to the interface stuff.
We need to give the users the ability to create new categories, and the place to put the link to this functionality is in the left hand function bar, under the "Issues" area. The file that defines how this area looks is html/page.html, which is what we are going to be editing next.
If you look at this file you can see that it contains a lot of "classblock" sections which are chunks of HTML that will be included or excluded in the output depending on whether the condition in the classblock is met. We are going to add the category code at the end of the classblock for the issue class:
<p class="classblock" tal:condition="python:request.user.hasPermission('View', 'category')"> <b>Categories</b><br> <a tal:condition="python:request.user.hasPermission('Edit', 'category')" href="category?@template=item">New Category<br></a> </p>
The first two lines is the classblock definition, which sets up a condition that only users who have "View" permission for the "category" object will have this section included in their output. Next comes a plain "Categories" header in bold. Everyone who can view categories will get that.
Next comes the link to the editing area of categories. This link will only appear if the condition - that the user has "Edit" permissions for the "category" objects - is matched. If they do have permission then they will get a link to another page which will let the user add new categories.
Note that if you have permission to view but not to edit categories, then all you will see is a "Categories" header with nothing underneath it. This is obviously not very good interface design, but will do for now. I just claim that it is so I can add more links in this section later on. However, to fix the problem you could change the condition in the classblock statement, so that only users with "Edit" permission would see the "Categories" stuff.
We defined code in the previous section which let users with the appropriate permissions see a link to a page which would let them edit conditions. Now we have to write that page.
The link was for the item template of the category object. This translates into Roundup looking for a file called category.item.html in the html tracker directory. This is the file that we are going to write now.
First, we add an info tag in a comment which doesn't affect the outcome of the code at all, but is useful for debugging. If you load a page in a browser and look at the page source, you can see which sections come from which files by looking for these comments:
<!-- category.item -->
Next we need to add in the METAL macro stuff so we get the normal page trappings:
<tal:block metal:use-macro="templates/page/macros/icing"> <title metal:fill-slot="head_title">Category editing</title> <td class="page-header-top" metal:fill-slot="body_title"> <h2>Category editing</h2> </td> <td class="content" metal:fill-slot="content">
Next we need to setup up a standard HTML form, which is the whole purpose of this file. We link to some handy javascript which sends the form through only once. This is to stop users hitting the send button multiple times when they are impatient and thus having the form sent multiple times:
<form method="POST" onSubmit="return submit_once()" enctype="multipart/form-data">
Next we define some code which sets up the minimum list of fields that we require the user to enter. There will be only one field - "name" - so they better put something in it, otherwise the whole form is pointless:
<input type="hidden" name="@required" value="name">
To get everything to line up properly we will put everything in a table, and put a nice big header on it so the user has an idea what is happening:
<table class="form"> <tr><th class="header" colspan="2">Category</th></tr>
Next, we need the field into which the user is going to enter the new category. The context.name.field(size=60) bit tells Roundup to generate a normal HTML field of size 60, and the contents of that field will be the "name" variable of the current context (namely "category"). The upshot of this is that when the user types something in to the form, a new category will be created with that name:
<tr> <th>Name</th> <td tal:content="structure python:context.name.field(size=60)"> name</td> </tr>
Then a submit button so that the user can submit the new category:
<tr> <td> </td> <td colspan="3" tal:content="structure context/submit"> submit button will go here </td> </tr>
Finally we finish off the tags we used at the start to do the METAL stuff:
</td> </tal:block>
So putting it all together, and closing the table and form we get:
<!-- category.item --> <tal:block metal:use-macro="templates/page/macros/icing"> <title metal:fill-slot="head_title">Category editing</title> <td class="page-header-top" metal:fill-slot="body_title"> <h2>Category editing</h2> </td> <td class="content" metal:fill-slot="content"> <form method="POST" onSubmit="return submit_once()" enctype="multipart/form-data"> <table class="form"> <tr><th class="header" colspan="2">Category</th></tr> <tr> <th>Name</th> <td tal:content="structure python:context.name.field(size=60)"> name</td> </tr> <tr> <td> <input type="hidden" name="@required" value="name"> </td> <td colspan="3" tal:content="structure context/submit"> submit button will go here </td> </tr> </table> </form> </td> </tal:block>
This is quite a lot to just ask the user one simple question, but there is a lot of setup for basically one line (the form line) to do its work. To add another field to "category" would involve one more line (well, maybe a few extra to get the formatting correct).
We now have the ability to create issues to our heart's content, but that is pointless unless we can assign categories to issues. Just like the html/category.item.html file was used to define how to add a new category, the html/issue.item.html is used to define how a new issue is created.
Just like category.issue.html, this file defines a form which has a table to lay things out. It doesn't matter where in the table we add new stuff, it is entirely up to your sense of aesthetics:
<th>Category</th> <td> <span tal:replace="structure context/category/field" /> <span tal:replace="structure python:db.category.classhelp('name', property='category', width='200')" /> </td>
First, we define a nice header so that the user knows what the next section is, then the middle line does what we are most interested in. This context/category/field gets replaced by a field which contains the category in the current context (the current context being the new issue).
The classhelp lines generate a link (labelled "list") to a popup window which contains the list of currently known categories.
Now we can add categories, and create issues with categories. The next obvious thing that we would like to be able to do, would be to search for issues based on their category, so that, for example, anyone working on the web server could look at all issues in the category "Web".
If you look for "Search Issues" in the html/page.html file, you will find that it looks something like <a href="issue?@template=search">Search Issues</a>. This shows us that when you click on "Search Issues" it will be looking for a issue.search.html file to display. So that is the file that we will change.
If you look at this file it should begin to seem familiar, although it does use some new macros. You can add the new category search code anywhere you like within that form:
<tr tal:define="name string:category; db_klass string:category; db_content string:name;"> <th>Priority:</th> <td metal:use-macro="search_select"></td> <td metal:use-macro="column_input"></td> <td metal:use-macro="sort_input"></td> <td metal:use-macro="group_input"></td> </tr>
The definitions in the <tr> opening tag are used by the macros:
The category search code above would expand to the following:
<tr> <th>Category:</th> <td> <select name="category"> <option value="">don't care</option> <option value="">------------</option> <option value="1">scipy</option> <option value="2">chaco</option> <option value="3">weave</option> </select> </td> <td><input type="checkbox" name=":columns" value="category"></td> <td><input type="radio" name=":sort0" value="category"></td> <td><input type="radio" name=":group0" value="category"></td> </tr>
We can now add categories, add issues with categories, and search for issues based on categories. This is everything that we need to do; however, there is some more icing that we would like. I think the category of an issue is important enough that it should be displayed by default when listing all the issues.
Unfortunately, this is a bit less obvious than the previous steps. The code defining how the issues look is in html/issue.index.html. This is a large table with a form down at the bottom for redisplaying and so forth.
Firstly we need to add an appropriate header to the start of the table:
<th tal:condition="request/show/category">Category</th>
The condition part of this statement is to avoid displaying the Category column if the user has selected not to see it.
The rest of the table is a loop which will go through every issue that matches the display criteria. The loop variable is "i" - which means that every issue gets assigned to "i" in turn.
The new part of code to display the category will look like this:
<td tal:condition="request/show/category" tal:content="i/category"></td>
The condition is the same as above: only display the condition when the user hasn't asked for it to be hidden. The next part is to set the content of the cell to be the category part of "i" - the current issue.
Finally we have to edit html/page.html again. This time, we need to tell it that when the user clicks on "Unassigned Issues" or "All Issues", the category column should be included in the resulting list. If you scroll down the page file, you can see the links with lots of options. The option that we are interested in is the :columns= one which tells roundup which fields of the issue to display. Simply add "category" to that list and it all should work.
We want to log the dates and amount of time spent working on issues, and be able to give a summary of the total time spent on a particular issue.
Add a new class to your tracker schema.py:
# storage for time logging timelog = Class(db, "timelog", period=Interval())
Note that we automatically get the date of the time log entry creation through the standard property "creation".
You will need to grant "Creation" permission to the users who are allowed to add timelog entries. You may do this with:
db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'Create', 'timelog') db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'View', 'timelog')
If users are also able to edit timelog entries, then also include:
db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'Edit', 'timelog')
Link to the new class from your issue class (again, in schema.py):
issue = IssueClass(db, "issue", assignedto=Link("user"), topic=Multilink("keyword"), priority=Link("priority"), status=Link("status"), times=Multilink("timelog"))
the "times" property is the new link to the "timelog" class.
We'll need to let people add in times to the issue, so in the web interface we'll have a new entry field. This is a special field because unlike the other fields in the issue.item template, it affects a different item (a timelog item) and not the template's item (an issue). We have a special syntax for form fields that affect items other than the template default item (see the cgi documentation on special form variables). In particular, we add a field to capture a new timelog item's period:
<tr> <th>Time Log</th> <td colspan=3><input type="text" name="timelog-1@period" /> (enter as '3y 1m 4d 2:40:02' or parts thereof) </td> </tr>
and another hidden field that links that new timelog item (new because it's marked as having id "-1") to the issue item. It looks like this:
<input type="hidden" name="@link@times" value="timelog-1" />
On submission, the "-1" timelog item will be created and assigned a real item id. The "times" property of the issue will have the new id added to it.
The full entry will now look like this:
<tr> <th>Time Log</th> <td colspan=3><input type="text" name="timelog-1@period" /> (enter as '3y 1m 4d 2:40:02' or parts thereof) <input type="hidden" name="@link@times" value="timelog-1" /> </td> </tr>
We want to display a total of the timelog times that have been accumulated for an issue. To do this, we'll need to actually write some Python code, since it's beyond the scope of PageTemplates to perform such calculations. We do this by adding a module timespent.py to the extensions directory in our tracker. The contents of this file is as follows:
from roundup import date def totalTimeSpent(times): ''' Call me with a list of timelog items (which have an Interval "period" property) ''' total = date.Interval('0d') for time in times: total += time.period._value return total def init(instance): instance.registerUtil('totalTimeSpent', totalTimeSpent)
We will now be able to access the totalTimeSpent function via the utils variable in our templates, as shown in the next step.
Display the timelog for an issue:
<table class="otherinfo" tal:condition="context/times"> <tr><th colspan="3" class="header">Time Log <tal:block tal:replace="python:utils.totalTimeSpent(context.times)" /> </th></tr> <tr><th>Date</th><th>Period</th><th>Logged By</th></tr> <tr tal:repeat="time context/times"> <td tal:content="time/creation"></td> <td tal:content="time/period"></td> <td tal:content="time/creator"></td> </tr> </table>
I put this just above the Messages log in my issue display. Note our use of the totalTimeSpent method which will total up the times for the issue and return a new Interval. That will be automatically displayed in the template as text like "+ 1y 2:40" (1 year, 2 hours and 40 minutes).
If you're using a persistent web server - roundup-server or mod_python for example - then you'll need to restart that to pick up the code changes. When that's done, you'll be able to use the new time logging interface.
An extension of this modification attaches the timelog entries to any change message entered at the time of the timelog entry:
Add a link to the timelog to the msg class in schema.py:
- msg = FileClass(db, "msg",
author=Link("user", do_journal='no'), recipients=Multilink("user", do_journal='no'), date=Date(), summary=String(), files=Multilink("file"), messageid=String(), inreplyto=String(), times=Multilink("timelog"))
Add a new hidden field that links that new timelog item (new because it's marked as having id "-1") to the new message. The link is placed in issue.item.html in the same section that handles the timelog entry.
It looks like this after this addition:
<tr> <th>Time Log</th> <td colspan=3><input type="text" name="timelog-1@period" /> (enter as '3y 1m 4d 2:40:02' or parts thereof) <input type="hidden" name="@link@times" value="timelog-1" /> <input type="hidden" name="msg-1@link@times" value="timelog-1" /> </td> </tr>
The "times" property of the message will have the new id added to it.
Add the timelog listing from step 5. to the msg.item.html template so that the timelog entry appears on the message view page. Note that the call to totalTimeSpent is not used here since there will only be one single timelog entry for each message.
I placed it after the Date entry like this:
<tr> <th i18n:translate="">Date:</th> <td tal:content="context/date"></td> </tr> </table> <table class="otherinfo" tal:condition="context/times"> <tr><th colspan="3" class="header">Time Log</th></tr> <tr><th>Date</th><th>Period</th><th>Logged By</th></tr> <tr tal:repeat="time context/times"> <td tal:content="time/creation"></td> <td tal:content="time/period"></td> <td tal:content="time/creator"></td> </tr> </table> <table class="messages">
Sometimes you will want to track different types of issues - developer, customer support, systems, sales leads, etc. A single Roundup tracker is able to support multiple types of issues. This example demonstrates adding a system support issue class to a tracker.
Figure out what information you're going to want to capture. OK, so this is obvious, but sometimes it's better to actually sit down for a while and think about the schema you're going to implement.
Add the new issue class to your tracker's schema.py. Just after the "issue" class definition, add:
# list our systems system = Class(db, "system", name=String(), order=Number()) system.setkey("name") # store issues related to those systems support = IssueClass(db, "support", assignedto=Link("user"), topic=Multilink("keyword"), status=Link("status"), deadline=Date(), affects=Multilink("system"))
Copy the existing issue.* (item, search and index) templates in the tracker's html to support.*. Edit them so they use the properties defined in the support class. Be sure to check for hidden form variables like "required" to make sure they have the correct set of required properties.
Edit the modules in the detectors, adding lines to their init functions where appropriate. Look for audit and react registrations on the issue class, and duplicate them for support.
Create a new sidebar box for the new support class. Duplicate the existing issues one, changing the issue class name to support.
Re-start your tracker and start using the new support class.
Optionally, you might want to restrict the users able to access this new class to just the users with a new "SysAdmin" Role. To do this, we add some security declarations:
db.security.addPermissionToRole('SysAdmin', 'View', 'support') db.security.addPermissionToRole('SysAdmin', 'Create', 'support') db.security.addPermissionToRole('SysAdmin', 'Edit', 'support')
You would then (as an "admin" user) edit the details of the appropriate users, and add "SysAdmin" to their Roles list.
Alternatively, you might want to change the Edit/View permissions granted for the issue class so that it's only available to users with the "System" or "Developer" Role, and then the new class you're adding is available to all with the "User" Role.
Note
You will need to either have an "admin" user in your external password source or have one of your regular users have the Admin Role assigned. If you need to assign the Role after making the changes below, you may use the roundup-admin program to edit a user's details.
We have a centrally-managed password changing system for our users. This results in a UN*X passwd-style file that we use for verification of users. Entries in the file consist of name:password where the password is encrypted using the standard UN*X crypt() function (see the crypt module in your Python distribution). An example entry would be:
admin:aamrgyQfDFSHw
Each user of Roundup must still have their information stored in the Roundup database - we just use the passwd file to check their password. To do this, we need to override the standard verifyPassword method defined in roundup.cgi.actions.LoginAction and register the new class. The following is added as externalpassword.py in the tracker extensions directory:
import os, crypt from roundup.cgi.actions import LoginAction class ExternalPasswordLoginAction(LoginAction): def verifyPassword(self, userid, password): '''Look through the file, line by line, looking for a name that matches. ''' # get the user's username username = self.db.user.get(userid, 'username') # the passwords are stored in the "passwd.txt" file in the # tracker home file = os.path.join(self.db.config.TRACKER_HOME, 'passwd.txt') # see if we can find a match for ent in [line.strip().split(':') for line in open(file).readlines()]: if ent[0] == username: return crypt.crypt(password, ent[1][:2]) == ent[1] # user doesn't exist in the file return 0 def init(instance): instance.registerAction('login', ExternalPasswordLoginAction)
You should also remove the redundant password fields from the user.item template.
On some systems the primary store of users is the UN*X passwd file. It holds information on users such as their username, real name, password and primary user group.
Roundup can use this store as its primary source of user information, but it needs additional information too - email address(es), roundup Roles, vacation flags, roundup hyperdb item ids, etc. Also, "retired" users must still exist in the user database, unlike some passwd files in which the users are removed when they no longer have access to a system.
To make use of the passwd file, we therefore synchronise between the two user stores. We also use the passwd file to validate the user logins, as described in the previous example, using an external password validation source. We keep the user lists in sync using a fairly simple script that runs once a day, or several times an hour if more immediate access is needed. In short, it:
The retiring and updating are simple operations, requiring only a call to retire() or set(). The creation operation requires more information though - the user's email address and their Roundup Roles. We're going to assume that the user's email address is the same as their login name, so we just append the domain name to that. The Roles are determined using the passwd group identifier - mapping their UN*X group to an appropriate set of Roles.
The script to perform all this, broken up into its main components, is as follows. Firstly, we import the necessary modules and open the tracker we're to work on:
import sys, os, smtplib from roundup import instance, date # open the tracker tracker_home = sys.argv[1] tracker = instance.open(tracker_home)
Next we read in the passwd file from the tracker home:
# read in the users from the "passwd.txt" file file = os.path.join(tracker_home, 'passwd.txt') users = [x.strip().split(':') for x in open(file).readlines()]
Handle special users (those to ignore in the file, and those who don't appear in the file):
# users to not keep ever, pre-load with the users I know aren't # "real" users ignore = ['ekmmon', 'bfast', 'csrmail'] # users to keep - pre-load with the roundup-specific users keep = ['comment_pool', 'network_pool', 'admin', 'dev-team', 'cs_pool', 'anonymous', 'system_pool', 'automated']
Now we map the UN*X group numbers to the Roles that users should have:
roles = { '501': 'User,Tech', # tech '502': 'User', # finance '503': 'User,CSR', # customer service reps '504': 'User', # sales '505': 'User', # marketing }
Now we do all the work. Note that the body of the script (where we have the tracker database open) is wrapped in a try / finally clause, so that we always close the database cleanly when we're finished. So, we now do all the work:
# open the database db = tracker.open('admin') try: # store away messages to send to the tracker admins msg = [] # loop over the users list read in from the passwd file for user,passw,uid,gid,real,home,shell in users: if user in ignore: # this user shouldn't appear in our tracker continue keep.append(user) try: # see if the user exists in the tracker uid = db.user.lookup(user) # yes, they do - now check the real name for correctness if real != db.user.get(uid, 'realname'): db.user.set(uid, realname=real) msg.append('FIX %s - %s'%(user, real)) except KeyError: # nope, the user doesn't exist db.user.create(username=user, realname=real, address='%s@ekit-inc.com'%user, roles=roles[gid]) msg.append('ADD %s - %s (%s)'%(user, real, roles[gid])) # now check that all the users in the tracker are also in our # "keep" list - retire those who aren't for uid in db.user.list(): user = db.user.get(uid, 'username') if user not in keep: db.user.retire(uid) msg.append('RET %s'%user) # if we did work, then send email to the tracker admins if msg: # create the email msg = '''Subject: %s user database maintenance %s '''%(db.config.TRACKER_NAME, '\n'.join(msg)) # send the email smtp = smtplib.SMTP(db.config.MAILHOST) addr = db.config.ADMIN_EMAIL smtp.sendmail(addr, addr, msg) # now we're done - commit the changes db.commit() finally: # always close the database cleanly db.close()
And that's it!
A script that reads users from an LDAP store using http://python-ldap.sf.net/ and then compares the list to the users in the roundup user database would be pretty easy to write. You'd then have it run once an hour / day (or on demand if you can work that into your LDAP store workflow). See the example Using a UN*X passwd file as the user database for more information about doing this.
To authenticate off the LDAP store (rather than using the passwords in the Roundup user database) you'd use the same python-ldap module inside an extension to the cgi interface. You'd do this by overriding the method called verifyPassword on the LoginAction class in your tracker's extensions directory (see using an external password validation source). The method is implemented by default as:
def verifyPassword(self, userid, password): ''' Verify the password that the user has supplied ''' stored = self.db.user.get(self.userid, 'password') if password == stored: return 1 if not password and not stored: return 1 return 0
So you could reimplement this as something like:
def verifyPassword(self, userid, password): ''' Verify the password that the user has supplied ''' # look up some unique LDAP information about the user username = self.db.user.get(self.userid, 'username') # now verify the password supplied against the LDAP store
When users go on vacation and set up vacation email bouncing, you'll start to see a lot of messages come back through Roundup "Fred is on vacation". Not very useful, and relatively easy to stop.
add a "vacation" flag to your users:
user = Class(db, "user", username=String(), password=Password(), address=String(), realname=String(), phone=String(), organisation=String(), alternate_addresses=String(), roles=String(), queries=Multilink("query"), vacation=Boolean())
So that users may edit the vacation flags, add something like the following to your user.item template:
<tr> <th>On Vacation</th> <td tal:content="structure context/vacation/field">vacation</td> </tr>
edit your detector nosyreactor.py so that the nosyreaction() consists of:
def nosyreaction(db, cl, nodeid, oldvalues): users = db.user messages = db.msg # send a copy of all new messages to the nosy list for msgid in determineNewMessages(cl, nodeid, oldvalues): try: # figure the recipient ids sendto = [] seen_message = {} recipients = messages.get(msgid, 'recipients') for recipid in messages.get(msgid, 'recipients'): seen_message[recipid] = 1 # figure the author's id, and indicate they've received # the message authid = messages.get(msgid, 'author') # possibly send the message to the author, as long as # they aren't anonymous if (db.config.MESSAGES_TO_AUTHOR == 'yes' and users.get(authid, 'username') != 'anonymous'): sendto.append(authid) seen_message[authid] = 1 # now figure the nosy people who weren't recipients nosy = cl.get(nodeid, 'nosy') for nosyid in nosy: # Don't send nosy mail to the anonymous user (that # user shouldn't appear in the nosy list, but just # in case they do...) if users.get(nosyid, 'username') == 'anonymous': continue # make sure they haven't seen the message already if not seen_message.has_key(nosyid): # send it to them sendto.append(nosyid) recipients.append(nosyid) # generate a change note if oldvalues: note = cl.generateChangeNote(nodeid, oldvalues) else: note = cl.generateCreateNote(nodeid) # we have new recipients if sendto: # filter out the people on vacation sendto = [i for i in sendto if not users.get(i, 'vacation', 0)] # map userids to addresses sendto = [users.get(i, 'address') for i in sendto] # update the message's recipients list messages.set(msgid, recipients=recipients) # send the message cl.send_message(nodeid, msgid, note, sendto) except roundupdb.MessageSendError, message: raise roundupdb.DetectorError, message
Note that this is the standard nosy reaction code, with the small addition of:
# filter out the people on vacation sendto = [i for i in sendto if not users.get(i, 'vacation', 0)]
which filters out the users that have the vacation flag set to true.
Sometimes tracker admins want to control the states to which users may move issues. You can do this by following these steps:
make "status" a required variable. This is achieved by adding the following to the top of the form in the issue.item.html template:
<input type="hidden" name="@required" value="status">
This will force users to select a status.
add a Multilink property to the status class:
stat = Class(db, "status", ... , transitions=Multilink('status'), ...)
and then edit the statuses already created, either:
add an auditor module checktransition.py in your tracker's detectors directory, for example:
def checktransition(db, cl, nodeid, newvalues): ''' Check that the desired transition is valid for the "status" property. ''' if not newvalues.has_key('status'): return current = cl.get(nodeid, 'status') new = newvalues['status'] if new == current: return ok = db.status.get(current, 'transitions') if new not in ok: raise ValueError, 'Status not allowed to move from "%s" to "%s"'%( db.status.get(current, 'name'), db.status.get(new, 'name')) def init(db): db.issue.audit('set', checktransition)
in the issue.item.html template, change the status editing bit from:
<th>Status</th> <td tal:content="structure context/status/menu">status</td>
to:
<th>Status</th> <td> <select tal:condition="context/id" name="status"> <tal:block tal:define="ok context/status/transitions" tal:repeat="state db/status/list"> <option tal:condition="python:state.id in ok" tal:attributes=" value state/id; selected python:state.id == context.status.id" tal:content="state/name"></option> </tal:block> </select> <tal:block tal:condition="not:context/id" tal:replace="structure context/status/menu" /> </td>
which displays only the allowed status to transition to.
We needed the ability to mark certain issues as "blockers" - that is, they can't be resolved until another issue (the blocker) they rely on is resolved. To achieve this:
Create a new property on the issue class: blockers=Multilink("issue"). To do this, edit the definition of this class in your tracker's schema.py file. Change this:
issue = IssueClass(db, "issue", assignedto=Link("user"), topic=Multilink("keyword"), priority=Link("priority"), status=Link("status"))
to this, adding the blockers entry:
issue = IssueClass(db, "issue", blockers=Multilink("issue"), assignedto=Link("user"), topic=Multilink("keyword"), priority=Link("priority"), status=Link("status"))
Add the new blockers property to the issue.item.html edit page, using something like:
<th>Waiting On</th> <td> <span tal:replace="structure python:context.blockers.field(showid=1, size=20)" /> <span tal:replace="structure python:db.issue.classhelp('id,title')" /> <span tal:condition="context/blockers" tal:repeat="blk context/blockers"> <br>View: <a tal:attributes="href string:issue${blk/id}" tal:content="blk/id"></a> </span>
You'll need to fiddle with your item page layout to find an appropriate place to put it - I'll leave that fun part up to you. Just make sure it appears in the first table, possibly somewhere near the "superseders" field.
Create a new detector module (see below) which enforces the rules:
The contents of the detector should be something like this:
def blockresolution(db, cl, nodeid, newvalues): ''' If the issue has blockers, don't allow it to be resolved. ''' if nodeid is None: blockers = [] else: blockers = cl.get(nodeid, 'blockers') blockers = newvalues.get('blockers', blockers) # don't do anything if there's no blockers or the status hasn't # changed if not blockers or not newvalues.has_key('status'): return # get the resolved state ID resolved_id = db.status.lookup('resolved') # format the info u = db.config.TRACKER_WEB s = ', '.join(['<a href="%sissue%s">%s</a>'%( u,id,id) for id in blockers]) if len(blockers) == 1: s = 'issue %s is'%s else: s = 'issues %s are'%s # ok, see if we're trying to resolve if newvalues['status'] == resolved_id: raise ValueError, "This issue can't be resolved until %s resolved."%s def resolveblockers(db, cl, nodeid, oldvalues): ''' When we resolve an issue that's a blocker, remove it from the blockers list of the issue(s) it blocks. ''' newstatus = cl.get(nodeid,'status') # no change? if oldvalues.get('status', None) == newstatus: return resolved_id = db.status.lookup('resolved') # interesting? if newstatus != resolved_id: return # yes - find all the blocked issues, if any, and remove me from # their blockers list issues = cl.find(blockers=nodeid) for issueid in issues: blockers = cl.get(issueid, 'blockers') if nodeid in blockers: blockers.remove(nodeid) cl.set(issueid, blockers=blockers) def init(db): # might, in an obscure situation, happen in a create db.issue.audit('create', blockresolution) db.issue.audit('set', blockresolution) # can only happen on a set db.issue.react('set', resolveblockers)
Put the above code in a file called "blockers.py" in your tracker's "detectors" directory.
Finally, and this is an optional step, modify the tracker web page URLs so they filter out issues with any blockers. You do this by adding an additional filter on "blockers" for the value "-1". For example, the existing "Show All" link in the "page" template (in the tracker's "html" directory) looks like this:
<a href="#" tal:attributes="href python:request.indexargs_url('issue', { '@sort': '-activity', '@group': 'priority', '@filter': 'status', '@columns': columns_showall, '@search_text': '', 'status': status_notresolved, '@dispname': i18n.gettext('Show All'), })" i18n:translate="">Show All</a><br>
modify it to add the "blockers" info to the URL (note, both the "@filter" and "blockers" values must be specified):
<a href="#" tal:attributes="href python:request.indexargs_url('issue', { '@sort': '-activity', '@group': 'priority', '@filter': 'status,blockers', '@columns': columns_showall, '@search_text': '', 'status': status_notresolved, 'blockers': '-1', '@dispname': i18n.gettext('Show All'), })" i18n:translate="">Show All</a><br>
The above examples are line-wrapped on the trailing & and should be unwrapped.
That's it. You should now be able to set blockers on your issues. Note that if you want to know whether an issue has any other issues dependent on it (i.e. it's in their blockers list) you can look at the journal history at the bottom of the issue page - look for a "link" event to another issue's "blockers" property.
Let's say we need the ability to automatically add users to the nosy list based on the occurance of a topic. Every user should be allowed to edit their own list of topics for which they want to be added to the nosy list.
Below, we'll show that this change can be done with minimal understanding of the Roundup system, using only copy and paste.
This requires three changes to the tracker: a change in the database to allow per-user recording of the lists of topics for which he wants to be put on the nosy list, a change in the user view allowing them to edit this list of topics, and addition of an auditor which updates the nosy list when a topic is set.
The change to make in the database, is that for any user there should be a list of topics for which he wants to be put on the nosy list. Adding a Multilink of keyword seems to fullfill this (note that within the code, topics are called keywords.) As such, all that has to be done is to add a new field to the definition of user within the file schema.py. We will call this new field nosy_keywords, and the updated definition of user will be:
user = Class(db, "user", username=String(), password=Password(), address=String(), realname=String(), phone=String(), organisation=String(), alternate_addresses=String(), queries=Multilink('query'), roles=String(), timezone=String(), nosy_keywords=Multilink('keyword'))
We want any user to be able to change the list of topics for which he will by default be added to the nosy list. We choose to add this to the user view, as is generated by the file html/user.item.html. We can easily see that the topic field in the issue view has very similar editing requirements as our nosy topics, both being lists of topics. As such, we look for Topics in issue.item.html, and extract the associated parts from there. We add this to user.item.html at the bottom of the list of viewed items (i.e. just below the 'Alternate E-mail addresses' in the classic template):
<tr> <th>Nosy Topics</th> <td> <span tal:replace="structure context/nosy_keywords/field" /> <span tal:replace="structure python:db.keyword.classhelp(property='nosy_keywords')" /> </td> </tr>
The more difficult part is the logic to add the users to the nosy list when required. We choose to perform this action whenever the topics on an item are set (this includes the creation of items). Here we choose to start out with a copy of the detectors/nosyreaction.py detector, which we copy to the file detectors/nosy_keyword_reaction.py. This looks like a good start as it also adds users to the nosy list. A look through the code reveals that the nosyreaction function actually sends the e-mail. We don't need this. Therefore, we can change the init function to:
def init(db): db.issue.audit('create', update_kw_nosy) db.issue.audit('set', update_kw_nosy)
After that, we rename the updatenosy function to update_kw_nosy. The first two blocks of code in that function relate to setting current to a combination of the old and new nosy lists. This functionality is left in the new auditor. The following block of code, which handled adding the assignedto user(s) to the nosy list in updatenosy, should be replaced by a block of code to add the interested users to the nosy list. We choose here to loop over all new topics, than looping over all users, and assign the user to the nosy list when the topic occurs in the user's nosy_keywords. The next part in updatenosy -- adding the author and/or recipients of a message to the nosy list -- is obviously not relevant here and is thus deleted from the new auditor. The last part, copying the new nosy list to newvalues, can stay as is. This results in the following function:
def update_kw_nosy(db, cl, nodeid, newvalues): '''Update the nosy list for changes to the topics ''' # nodeid will be None if this is a new node current = {} if nodeid is None: ok = ('new', 'yes') else: ok = ('yes',) # old node, get the current values from the node if they haven't # changed if not newvalues.has_key('nosy'): nosy = cl.get(nodeid, 'nosy') for value in nosy: if not current.has_key(value): current[value] = 1 # if the nosy list changed in this transaction, init from the new value if newvalues.has_key('nosy'): nosy = newvalues.get('nosy', []) for value in nosy: if not db.hasnode('user', value): continue if not current.has_key(value): current[value] = 1 # add users with topic in nosy_keywords to the nosy list if newvalues.has_key('topic') and newvalues['topic'] is not None: topic_ids = newvalues['topic'] for topic in topic_ids: # loop over all users, # and assign user to nosy when topic in nosy_keywords for user_id in db.user.list(): nosy_kw = db.user.get(user_id, "nosy_keywords") found = 0 for kw in nosy_kw: if kw == topic: found = 1 if found: current[user_id] = 1 # that's it, save off the new nosy list newvalues['nosy'] = current.keys()
These two function are the only ones needed in the file.
TODO: update this example to use the find() Class method.
A few problems with the design here can be noted:
When a user, after automatic selection, is manually removed from the nosy list, he is added to the nosy list again when the topic list of the issue is updated. A better design might be to only check which topics are new compared to the old list of topics, and only add users when they have indicated interest on a new topic.
The code could also be changed to only trigger on the create() event, rather than also on the set() event, thus only setting the nosy list when the issue is created.
In your tracker's schema.py, create a new Role, say "Developer":
db.security.addRole(name='Developer', description='A developer')
Just after that, create a new Permission, say "Fixer", specific to "issue":
p = db.security.addPermission(name='Fixer', klass='issue', description='User is allowed to be assigned to fix issues')
Then assign the new Permission to your "Developer" Role:
db.security.addPermissionToRole('Developer', p)
In the issue item edit page (html/issue.item.html in your tracker directory), use the new Permission in restricting the "assignedto" list:
<select name="assignedto"> <option value="-1">- no selection -</option> <tal:block tal:repeat="user db/user/list"> <option tal:condition="python:user.hasPermission( 'Fixer', context._classname)" tal:attributes=" value user/id; selected python:user.id == context.assignedto" tal:content="user/realname"></option> </tal:block> </select>
For extra security, you may wish to setup an auditor to enforce the Permission requirement (install this as assignedtoFixer.py in your tracker detectors directory):
def assignedtoMustBeFixer(db, cl, nodeid, newvalues): ''' Ensure the assignedto value in newvalues is used with the Fixer Permission ''' if not newvalues.has_key('assignedto'): # don't care return # get the userid userid = newvalues['assignedto'] if not db.security.hasPermission('Fixer', userid, cl.classname): raise ValueError, 'You do not have permission to edit %s'%cl.classname def init(db): db.issue.audit('set', assignedtoMustBeFixer) db.issue.audit('create', assignedtoMustBeFixer)
So now, if an edit action attempts to set "assignedto" to a user that doesn't have the "Fixer" Permission, the error will be raised.
In this case, users registering themselves are granted Provisional access, meaning they have access to edit the issues they submit, but not others. We create a new Role called "Provisional User" which is granted to newly-registered users, and has limited access. One of the Permissions they have is the new "Edit Own" on issues (regular users have "Edit".)
First up, we create the new Role and Permission structure in schema.py:
# # New users not approved by the admin # db.security.addRole(name='Provisional User', description='New user registered via web or email') # These users need to be able to view and create issues but only edit # and view their own db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', 'Create', 'issue') def own_issue(db, userid, itemid): '''Determine whether the userid matches the creator of the issue.''' return userid == db.issue.get(itemid, 'creator') p = db.security.addPermission(name='Edit', klass='issue', check=own_issue, description='Can only edit own issues') db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', p) p = db.security.addPermission(name='View', klass='issue', check=own_issue, description='Can only view own issues') db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', p) # Assign the Permissions for issue-related classes for cl in 'file', 'msg', 'query', 'keyword': db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', 'View', cl) db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', 'Edit', cl) db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', 'Create', cl) for cl in 'priority', 'status': db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', 'View', cl) # and give the new users access to the web and email interface db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', 'Web Access') db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', 'Email Access') # make sure they can view & edit their own user record def own_record(db, userid, itemid): '''Determine whether the userid matches the item being accessed.''' return userid == itemid p = db.security.addPermission(name='View', klass='user', check=own_record, description="User is allowed to view their own user details") db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', p) p = db.security.addPermission(name='Edit', klass='user', check=own_record, description="User is allowed to edit their own user details") db.security.addPermissionToRole('Provisional User', p)
Then, in config.ini, we change the Role assigned to newly-registered users, replacing the existing 'User' values:
[main] ... new_web_user_roles = 'Provisional User' new_email_user_roles = 'Provisional User'
Replace the standard "classic" tracker View and Edit Permission assignments for the "issue", "file" and "msg" classes with the following:
def checker(klass): def check(db, userid, itemid, klass=klass): return db.getclass(klass).get(itemid, 'creator') == userid return check for cl in 'issue', 'file', 'msg': p = db.security.addPermission(name='View', klass=cl, check=checker(cl)) db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', p) p = db.security.addPermission(name='Edit', klass=cl, check=checker(cl)) db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', p) db.security.addPermissionToRole('User', 'Create', cl)
Add a column to the item.index.html template.
Resolving the issue:
<a tal:attributes="href string:issue${i/id}?:status=resolved&:action=edit">resolve</a>
"Take" the issue:
<a tal:attributes="href string:issue${i/id}?:assignedto=${request/user/id}&:action=edit">take</a>
... and so on.
A simple tal:attributes statement will do the bulk of the work here. In the issue.index.html template, add this to the <tr> that displays the rows of data:
<tr tal:attributes="class string:priority-${i/priority/plain}">
and then in your stylesheet (style.css) specify the colouring for the different priorities, as follows:
tr.priority-critical td { background-color: red; } tr.priority-urgent td { background-color: orange; }
and so on, with far less offensive colours :)
To edit the status of all items in the item index view, edit the issue.item.html:
add a form around the listing table (separate from the existing index-page form), so at the top it reads:
<form method="POST" tal:attributes="action request/classname"> <table class="list">
and at the bottom of that table:
</table> </form
making sure you match the </table> from the list table, not the navigation table or the subsequent form table.
in the display for the issue property, change:
<td tal:condition="request/show/status" tal:content="python:i.status.plain() or default"> </td>
to:
<td tal:condition="request/show/status" tal:content="structure i/status/field"> </td>
this will result in an edit field for the status property.
after the tal:block which lists the index items (marked by tal:repeat="i batch") add a new table row:
<tr> <td tal:attributes="colspan python:len(request.columns)"> <input type="submit" value=" Save Changes "> <input type="hidden" name="@action" value="edit"> <tal:block replace="structure request/indexargs_form" /> </td> </tr>
which gives us a submit button, indicates that we are performing an edit on any changed statuses. The final tal:block will make sure that the current index view parameters (filtering, columns, etc) will be used in rendering the next page (the results of the editing).
Alter the issue.item template section for messages to:
<table class="messages" tal:condition="context/messages"> <tr><th colspan="5" class="header">Messages</th></tr> <tr tal:repeat="msg context/messages"> <td><a tal:attributes="href string:msg${msg/id}" tal:content="string:msg${msg/id}"></a></td> <td tal:content="msg/author">author</td> <td class="date" tal:content="msg/date/pretty">date</td> <td tal:content="msg/summary">summary</td> <td> <a tal:attributes="href string:?@remove@messages=${msg/id}&@action=edit"> remove</a> </td> </tr> </table>
This is pretty simple - all we need to do is copy the code from the example displaying only message summaries in the issue display into our template alongside the summary display, and then introduce a switch that shows either the one or the other. We'll use a new form variable, @whole_messages to achieve this:
<table class="messages" tal:condition="context/messages"> <tal:block tal:condition="not:request/form/@whole_messages/value | python:0"> <tr><th colspan="3" class="header">Messages</th> <th colspan="2" class="header"> <a href="?@whole_messages=yes">show entire messages</a> </th> </tr> <tr tal:repeat="msg context/messages"> <td><a tal:attributes="href string:msg${msg/id}" tal:content="string:msg${msg/id}"></a></td> <td tal:content="msg/author">author</td> <td class="date" tal:content="msg/date/pretty">date</td> <td tal:content="msg/summary">summary</td> <td> <a tal:attributes="href string:?@remove@messages=${msg/id}&@action=edit">remove</a> </td> </tr> </tal:block> <tal:block tal:condition="request/form/@whole_messages/value | python:0"> <tr><th colspan="2" class="header">Messages</th> <th class="header"> <a href="?@whole_messages=">show only summaries</a> </th> </tr> <tal:block tal:repeat="msg context/messages"> <tr> <th tal:content="msg/author">author</th> <th class="date" tal:content="msg/date/pretty">date</th> <th style="text-align: right"> (<a tal:attributes="href string:?@remove@messages=${msg/id}&@action=edit">remove</a>) </th> </tr> <tr><td colspan="3" tal:content="msg/content"></td></tr> </tal:block> </tal:block> </table>
Set up the page templates you wish to use for data input. My wizard is going to be a two-step process: first figuring out what category of issue the user is submitting, and then getting details specific to that category. The first page includes a table of help, explaining what the category names mean, and then the core of the form:
<form method="POST" onSubmit="return submit_once()" enctype="multipart/form-data"> <input type="hidden" name="@template" value="add_page1"> <input type="hidden" name="@action" value="page1_submit"> <strong>Category:</strong> <tal:block tal:replace="structure context/category/menu" /> <input type="submit" value="Continue"> </form>
The next page has the usual issue entry information, with the addition of the following form fragments:
<form method="POST" onSubmit="return submit_once()" enctype="multipart/form-data" tal:condition="context/is_edit_ok" tal:define="cat request/form/category/value"> <input type="hidden" name="@template" value="add_page2"> <input type="hidden" name="@required" value="title"> <input type="hidden" name="category" tal:attributes="value cat"> . . . </form>
Note that later in the form, I use the value of "cat" to decide which form elements should be displayed. For example:
<tal:block tal:condition="python:cat in '6 10 13 14 15 16 17'.split()"> <tr> <th>Operating System</th> <td tal:content="structure context/os/field"></td> </tr> <tr> <th>Web Browser</th> <td tal:content="structure context/browser/field"></td> </tr> </tal:block>
... the above section will only be displayed if the category is one of 6, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 or 17.
Determine what actions need to be taken between the pages - these are usually to validate user choices and determine what page is next. Now encode those actions in a new Action class (see defining new web actions):
from roundup.cgi.actions import Action class Page1SubmitAction(Action): def handle(self): ''' Verify that the user has selected a category, and then move on to page 2. ''' category = self.form['category'].value if category == '-1': self.error_message.append('You must select a category of report') return # everything's ok, move on to the next page self.template = 'add_page2' def init(instance): instance.registerAction('page1_submit', Page1SubmitAction)
Use the usual "new" action as the @action on the final page, and you're done (the standard context/submit method can do this for you).
There are three switches in tracker configs that turn on debugging in Roundup:
See the config.ini file or the tracker configuration section above for more information.
Additionally, the roundup-server.py script has its own debugging mode in which it reloads edited templates immediately when they are changed, rather than requiring a web server restart.
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