Customising Roundup
Contents
What You Can Do
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:
- tracker configuration changes
- database, or tracker schema changes
- “definition” class database content changes
- behavioural changes, through detectors
- security / access controls
- change the web interface
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 in a Nutshell
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 |
Tracker Configuration
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”.
- Section main
- database – db
- Database directory path. The path may be either absolute or relative to the directory containig this config file.
- templates – html
- Path to the HTML templates directory. The path may be either absolute or relative to the directory containig this config file.
- static_files – default blank
- Path to directory holding additional static files available via Web UI. This directory may contain sitewide images, CSS stylesheets etc. and is searched for these files prior to the TEMPLATES directory specified above. If this option is not set, all static files are taken from the TEMPLATES directory The path may be either absolute or relative to the directory containig this config file.
- admin_email – roundup-admin
- Email address that roundup will complain to if it runs into trouble. If the email address doesn’t contain an @ part, the MAIL_DOMAIN defined below is used.
- dispatcher_email – roundup-admin
- The ‘dispatcher’ is a role that can get notified of new items to the database. It is used by the ERROR_MESSAGES_TO config setting. If the email address doesn’t contain an @ part, the MAIL_DOMAIN defined below is used.
- email_from_tag – default blank
- Additional text to include in the “name” part of the From: address used in nosy messages. If the sending user is “Foo Bar”, the From: line is usually: "Foo Bar"<EMAIL_ADDRESS>the EMAIL_FROM_TAG goes inside the “Foo Bar” quotes like so: "Foo Bar EMAIL_FROM_TAG"<EMAIL_ADDRESS>- new_web_user_roles – User
- Roles that a user gets when they register with Web User Interface. This is a comma-separated list of role names (e.g. Admin,User).
- new_email_user_roles – User
- Roles that a user gets when they register with Email Gateway. This is a comma-separated string of role names (e.g. Admin,User).
- error_messages_to – user
- Send error message emails to the dispatcher, user, or both? The dispatcher is configured using the DISPATCHER_EMAIL setting. Allowed values: dispatcher, user, or both
- html_version – html4
- HTML version to generate. The templates are html4 by default. If you wish to make them xhtml, then you’ll need to change this var to xhtml too so all auto-generated HTML is compliant. Allowed values: html4, xhtml
- timezone – 0
- Numeric timezone offset used when users do not choose their own in their settings.
- instant_registration – yes
- Register new users instantly, or require confirmation via email? Allowed values: yes, no
- email_registration_confirmation – yes
- Offer registration confirmation by email or only through the web? Allowed values: yes, no
- indexer_stopwords – default blank
- Additional stop-words for the full-text indexer specific to your tracker. See the indexer source for the default list of stop-words (e.g. A,AND,ARE,AS,AT,BE,BUT,BY, ...).
- umask – 02
- Defines the file creation mode mask.
- Section tracker
- name – Roundup issue tracker
- A descriptive name for your roundup instance.
- web – http://host.example/demo/
- The web address that the tracker is viewable at. This will be included in information sent to users of the tracker. The URL MUST include the cgi-bin part or anything else that is required to get to the home page of the tracker. You MUST include a trailing ‘/’ in the URL.
- email – issue_tracker
- Email address that mail to roundup should go to.
- language – default blank
- Default locale name for this tracker. If this option is not set, the language is determined by the environment variable LANGUAGE, LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, or LANG, in that order of preference.
- Section web
- allow_html_file – no
- Setting this option enables Roundup to serve uploaded HTML file content as HTML. This is a potential security risk and is therefore disabled by default. Set to ‘yes’ if you trust all users uploading content to your tracker.
- http_auth – yes
- Whether to use HTTP Basic Authentication, if present. Roundup will use either the REMOTE_USER or HTTP_AUTHORIZATION variables supplied by your web server (in that order). Set this option to ‘no’ if you do not wish to use HTTP Basic Authentication in your web interface.
- use_browser_language – yes
- Whether to use HTTP Accept-Language, if present. Browsers send a language-region preference list. It’s usually set in the client’s browser or in their Operating System. Set this option to ‘no’ if you want to ignore it.
- debug – no
- Setting this option makes Roundup display error tracebacks in the user’s browser rather than emailing them to the tracker admin.”),
- Section rdbms
Settings in this section are used by Postgresql and MySQL backends only
- name – roundup
- Name of the database to use.
- host – localhost
- Database server host.
- port – default blank
- TCP port number of the database server. Postgresql usually resides on port 5432 (if any), for MySQL default port number is 3306. Leave this option empty to use backend default.
- user – roundup
- Database user name that Roundup should use.
- password – roundup
- Database user password.
- read_default_file – ~/.my.cnf
- Name of the MySQL defaults file. Only used in MySQL connections.
- read_default_group – roundup
- Name of the group to use in the MySQL defaults file. Only used in MySQL connections.
- Section logging
- config – default blank
- Path to configuration file for standard Python logging module. If this option is set, logging configuration is loaded from specified file; options ‘filename’ and ‘level’ in this section are ignored. The path may be either absolute or relative to the directory containig this config file.
- filename – default blank
- Log file name for minimal logging facility built into Roundup. If no file name specified, log messages are written on stderr. If above ‘config’ option is set, this option has no effect. The path may be either absolute or relative to the directory containig this config file.
- level – ERROR
- Minimal severity level of messages written to log file. If above ‘config’ option is set, this option has no effect. Allowed values: DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR
- Section mail
Outgoing email options. Used for nosy messages, password reset and registration approval requests.
- domain – localhost
- Domain name used for email addresses.
- host – default blank
- SMTP mail host that roundup will use to send mail
- username – default blank
- SMTP login name. Set this if your mail host requires authenticated access. If username is not empty, password (below) MUST be set!
- password – default blank
- SMTP login password. Set this if your mail host requires authenticated access.
- port – default 25
- SMTP port on mail host. Set this if your mail host runs on a different port.
- local_hostname – default blank
- The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) to use during SMTP sessions. If left blank, the underlying SMTP library will attempt to detect your FQDN. If your mail host requires something specific, specify the FQDN to use.
- tls – no
- If your SMTP mail host provides or requires TLS (Transport Layer Security) then you may set this option to ‘yes’. Allowed values: yes, no
- tls_keyfile – default blank
- If TLS is used, you may set this option to the name of a PEM formatted file that contains your private key. The path may be either absolute or relative to the directory containig this config file.
- tls_certfile – default blank
- If TLS is used, you may set this option to the name of a PEM formatted certificate chain file. The path may be either absolute or relative to the directory containig this config file.
- charset – utf-8
- Character set to encode email headers with. We use utf-8 by default, as it’s the most flexible. Some mail readers (eg. Eudora) can’t cope with that, so you might need to specify a more limited character set (eg. iso-8859-1).
- debug – default blank
- Setting this option makes Roundup to write all outgoing email messages to this file instead of sending them. This option has the same effect as environment variable SENDMAILDEBUG. Environment variable takes precedence. The path may be either absolute or relative to the directory containig this config file.
- add_authorinfo – yes
- Add a line with author information at top of all messages send by roundup.
- add_authoremail – yes
- Add the mail address of the author to the author information at the top of all messages. If this is false but add_authorinfo is true, only the name of the actor is added which protects the mail address of the actor from being exposed at mail archives, etc.
- Section mailgw
Roundup Mail Gateway options
- keep_quoted_text – yes
- Keep email citations when accepting messages. Setting this to no strips out “quoted” text from the message. Signatures are also stripped. Allowed values: yes, no
- leave_body_unchanged – no
- Preserve the email body as is - that is, keep the citations and signatures. Allowed values: yes, no
- default_class – issue
- Default class to use in the mailgw if one isn’t supplied in email subjects. To disable, leave the value blank.
- language – default blank
- Default locale name for the tracker mail gateway. If this option is not set, mail gateway will use the language of the tracker instance.
- subject_prefix_parsing – strict
- Controls the parsing of the [prefix] on subject lines in incoming emails. strict will return an error to the sender if the [prefix] is not recognised. loose will attempt to parse the [prefix] but just pass it through as part of the issue title if not recognised. none will always pass any [prefix] through as part of the issue title.
- subject_suffix_parsing – strict
- Controls the parsing of the [suffix] on subject lines in incoming emails. strict will return an error to the sender if the [suffix] is not recognised. loose will attempt to parse the [suffix] but just pass it through as part of the issue title if not recognised. none will always pass any [suffix] through as part of the issue title.
- subject_suffix_delimiters – []
- Defines the brackets used for delimiting the commands suffix in a subject line.
- subject_content_match – always
- Controls matching of the incoming email subject line against issue titles in the case where there is no designator [prefix]. never turns off matching. creation + interval or activity + interval will match an issue for the interval after the issue’s creation or last activity. The interval is a standard Roundup interval.
- subject_updates_title – yes
- Update issue title if incoming subject of email is different. Setting this to no will ignore the title part of the subject of incoming email messages.
- refwd_re – (\s*\W?\s*(fw|fwd|re|aw|sv|ang)\W)+
- Regular expression matching a single reply or forward prefix prepended by the mailer. This is explicitly stripped from the subject during parsing. Value is Python Regular Expression (UTF8-encoded).
- origmsg_re – `` ^[>|s]*—–s?Original Messages?—–$``
- Regular expression matching start of an original message if quoted in the body. Value is Python Regular Expression (UTF8-encoded).
- sign_re – ^[>|\s]*-- ?$
- Regular expression matching the start of a signature in the message body. Value is Python Regular Expression (UTF8-encoded).
- eol_re – [\r\n]+
- Regular expression matching end of line. Value is Python Regular Expression (UTF8-encoded).
- blankline_re – [\r\n]+\s*[\r\n]+
- Regular expression matching a blank line. Value is Python Regular Expression (UTF8-encoded).
- ignore_alternatives – no
- When parsing incoming mails, roundup uses the first text/plain part it finds. If this part is inside a multipart/alternative, and this option is set, all other parts of the multipart/alternative are ignored. The default is to keep all parts and attach them to the issue.
- Section pgp
OpenPGP mail processing options
- enable – no
- Enable PGP processing. Requires pyme.
- roles – default blank
- If specified, a comma-separated list of roles to perform PGP processing on. If not specified, it happens for all users.
- homedir – default blank
- Location of PGP directory. Defaults to $HOME/.gnupg if not specified.
- Section nosy
Nosy messages sending
- messages_to_author – no
- Send nosy messages to the author of the message. Allowed values: yes, no, new
- signature_position – bottom
- Where to place the email signature. Allowed values: top, bottom, none
- add_author – new
- Does the author of a message get placed on the nosy list automatically? If new is used, then the author will only be added when a message creates a new issue. If yes, then the author will be added on followups too. If no, they’re never added to the nosy. Allowed values: yes, no, new
- add_recipients – new
- Do the recipients (To:, Cc:) of a message get placed on the nosy list? If new is used, then the recipients will only be added when a message creates a new issue. If yes, then the recipients will be added on followups too. If no, they’re never added to the nosy. Allowed values: yes, no, new
- email_sending – single
- Controls the email sending from the nosy reactor. If multiple then a separate email is sent to each recipient. If single then a single email is sent with each recipient as a CC address.
- max_attachment_size –<PHONE_NUMBER>
- Attachments larger than the given number of bytes won’t be attached to nosy mails. They will be replaced by a link to the tracker’s download page for the file.
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:
Extending the configuration file
You can’t add new variables to the config.ini file in the tracker home but you can add two new config.ini files:
- a config.ini in the extensions directory will be loaded and attached to the config variable as “ext”.
- a config.ini in the detectors directory will be loaded and attached to the config variable as “detectors”.
For example, the following in detectors/config.ini:
[main]
qa_recipients =<EMAIL_ADDRESS>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_ADDRESS>then the above db.config.detectors['QA_RECIPIENTS'] will still work.
Tracker Schema
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
The schema.py module contains two functions:
- open
- This function defines what your tracker looks like on the inside, the schema of the tracker. It defines the Classes and properties on each class. It also defines the security for those Classes. The next few sections describe how schemas work and what you can do with them.
- init
- This function is responsible for setting up the initial state of your tracker. It’s called exactly once - by the roundup-admin initialise command. See the start of the section on database content for more info about how this works.
The “classic” schema
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", keyword=Multilink("keyword"),
status=Link("status"), assignedto=Link("user"),
priority=Link("priority"))
issue.setkey('title')
What you can’t do to the schema
You must never:
- Remove the users class
- This class is the only required class in Roundup.
- Remove the “username”, “address”, “password” or “realname” user properties
- Various parts of Roundup require these properties. Don’t remove them.
- Change the type of a property
- Property types must never be changed - the database simply doesn’t take this kind of action into account. Note that you can’t just remove a property and re-add it as a new type either. If you wanted to make the assignedto property a Multilink, you’d need to create a new property assignedto_list and remove the old assignedto property.
What you can do to the schema
Your schema may be changed at any time before or after the tracker has been initialised (or used). You may:
- Add new properties to classes, or add whole new classes
- This is painless and easy to do - there are generally no repurcussions from adding new information to a tracker’s schema.
- Remove properties
- Removing properties is a little more tricky - you need to make sure that the property is no longer used in the web interface or by the detectors.
Classes and Properties - creating a new information store
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.
Class and Items
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.
Properties
A Class is comprised of one or more properties of the following types:
- String properties are for storing arbitrary-length strings.
- Password properties are for storing encoded arbitrary-length strings. The default encoding is defined on the roundup.password.Password class.
- Date properties store date-and-time stamps. Their values are Timestamp objects.
- Number properties store numeric values.
- Boolean properties store on/off, yes/no, true/false values.
- A Link property refers to a single other item selected from a specified class. The class is part of the property; the value is an integer, the id of the chosen item.
- A Multilink property refers to possibly many items in a specified class. The value is a list of integers.
All Classes automatically have a number of properties by default:
- creator
- Link to the user that created the item.
- creation
- Date the item was created.
- actor
- Link to the user that last modified the item.
- activity
- Date the item was last modified.
FileClass
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.
IssueClass
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.
setkey(property)
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.
setlabelprop(property)
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.
setorderprop(property)
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(information)
Create an item in the database. This is generally used to create items in the “definitional” classes like “priority” and “status”.
A note about ordering
When we sort items in the hyperdb, we use one of a number of methods, depending on the properties being sorted on:
- If it’s a String, Number, Date or Interval property, we just sort the scalar value of the property. Strings are sorted case-sensitively.
- If it’s a Link property, we sort by either the linked item’s “order” property (if it has one) or the linked item’s “id”.
- Mulitlinks sort similar to #2, but we start with the first Multilink list item, and if they’re the same, we sort by the second item, and so 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.
Examples of adding to your schema
The Roundup wiki has examples of how schemas can be customised to add new functionality.
Detectors - adding behaviour to your tracker
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:
- nosyreaction.py
- This provides the automatic nosy list maintenance and email sending. The nosy reactor (nosyreaction) fires when new messages are added to issues. The nosy auditor (updatenosy) fires when issues are changed, and figures out what changes need to be made to the nosy list (such as adding new authors, etc.)
- statusauditor.py
- This provides the chatty auditor which changes the issue status from unread or closed to chatting if new messages appear. It also provides the presetunread auditor which pre-sets the status to unread on new items if the status isn’t explicitly defined.
- messagesummary.py
- Generates the summary property for new messages based on the message content.
- userauditor.py
- Verifies the content of some of the user fields (email addresses and roles lists).
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.
Detector API
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.
Additional Detectors Ready For Use
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:
- irker.py
- This detector sends notification on IRC through an irker daemon (http://www.catb.org/esr/irker/) when issues are created or messages are added. In order to use it you need to install irker, start the irkerd daemon, and add an [irker] section in detectors/config.ini that contains a comma-separated list of channels where the messages should be sent, e.g. channels = irc://chat.freenode.net/channelname.
- newissuecopy.py
- This detector sends an email to a team address whenever a new issue is created. The address is hard-coded into the detector, so edit it before you use it (look for the text<EMAIL_ADDRESS>or you’ll get email errors!
- creator_resolution.py
- Catch attempts to set the status to “resolved” - if the assignedto user isn’t the creator, then set the status to “confirm-done”. Note that “classic” Roundup doesn’t have that status, so you’ll have to add it. If you don’t want to though, it’ll just use “in-progress” instead.
- email_auditor.py
- If a file added to an issue is of type message/rfc822, we tack on the extension .eml. The reason for this is that Microsoft Internet Explorer will not open things with a .eml attachment, as they deem it ‘unsafe’. Worse yet, they’ll just give you an incomprehensible error message. For more information, see the detector code - it has a length explanation.
Auditor or Reactor?
Generally speaking, the following rules should be observed:
- Auditors
- Are used for vetoing creation of or changes to items. They might also make automatic changes to item properties.
- Reactors
- Detect changes in the database and react accordingly. They should avoid making changes to the database where possible, as this could create detector loops.
Vetoing creation of or changes to items
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
Generating email from Roundup
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).
Database Content
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.
- Changing content before tracker initialisation
- Edit the initial_data.py module in your tracker to alter the items created using the create( ... ) methods.
- Changing content after tracker initialisation
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.
Security / Access Controls
A set of Permissions is built into the security module by default:
- Create (everything)
- Edit (everything)
- View (everything)
- Register (User class only)
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:
- Email Access
- If defined, the user may use the email interface. Used by default to deny Anonymous users access to the email interface. When granted to the Anonymous user, they will be automatically registered by the email interface (see also the new_email_user_roles configuration option).
- Web Access
- If defined, the user may use the web interface. All users are able to see the login form, regardless of this setting (thus enabling logging in).
- Web Roles
- Controls user access to editing the “roles” property of the “user” class.
These are hooked into the default Roles:
- Admin (Create, Edit, View and everything; Web Roles)
- User (Web Access; Email Access)
- Anonymous (Web Access)
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:
- Create, Edit and View issue, file, msg, query, keyword
- View priority, status
- View user
- Edit their own user record
And the “Anonymous” Role is defined as:
- Web interface access
- Register user (for registration)
- View issue, file, msg, query, keyword, priority, status
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)
Automatic Permission Checks
Permissions are automatically checked when information is rendered through the web. This includes:
- View checks for properties when being rendered via the plain() or similar methods. If the check fails, the text “[hidden]” will be displayed.
- Edit checks for properties when the edit field is being rendered via the field() or similar methods. If the check fails, the property will be rendered via the plain() method (see point 1. for subsequent checking performed)
- View checks are performed in index pages for each item being displayed such that if the user does not have permission, the row is not rendered.
- View checks are performed at the top of item pages for the Item being displayed. If the user does not have permission, the text “You are not allowed to view this page.” will be displayed.
- View checks are performed at the top of index pages for the Class being displayed. If the user does not have permission, the text “You are not allowed to view this page.” will be displayed.
New User Roles
New users are assigned the Roles defined in the config file as:
- NEW_WEB_USER_ROLES
- NEW_EMAIL_USER_ROLES
The users may only edit their issues example shows customisation of these parameters.
Changing Access Controls
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.
Adding a new Permission
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:
- properties
- A sequence of property names that are the only properties to apply the new Permission to (eg. ... klass='user', properties=('name', 'email') ...)
- check
- A function to be execute which returns boolean determining whether the Permission is allowed. The function has the signature check(db, userid, itemid) where db is a handle on the open database, userid is the user attempting access and itemid is the specific item being accessed.
Example Scenarios
See the examples section for longer examples of customisation.
- anonymous access through the e-mail gateway
- Give the “anonymous” user the “Email Access”, (“Edit”, “issue”) and (“Create”, “msg”) Permissions but do not not give them the (“Create”, “user”) Permission. This means that when an unknown user sends email into the tracker, they’re automatically logged in as “anonymous”. Since they don’t have the (“Create”, “user”) Permission, they won’t be automatically registered, but since “anonymous” has permission to use the gateway, they’ll still be able to submit issues. Note that the Sender information - their email address - will not be available - they’re anonymous.
- automatic registration of users in the e-mail gateway
- By giving the “anonymous” user the (“Register”, “user”) Permission, any unidentified user will automatically be registered with the tracker (with no password, so they won’t be able to log in through the web until an admin sets their password). By default new Roundup trackers don’t allow this as it opens them up to spam. It may be enabled by uncommenting the appropriate addPermissionToRole in your tracker’s schema.py file. The new user is given the Roles list defined in the “new_email_user_roles” config variable.
- only developers may be assigned issues
- Create a new Permission called “Fixer” for the “issue” class. Create a new Role “Developer” which has that Permission, and assign that to the appropriate users. Filter the list of users available in the assignedto list to include only those users. Enforce the Permission with an auditor. See the example restricting the list of users that are assignable to a task.
- only managers may sign off issues as complete
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>
- don’t give web access to users who register through email
- Create a new Role called “Email User” which has all the Permissions of the normal “User” Role minus the “Web Access” Permission. This will allow users to send in emails to the tracker, but not access the web interface.
- let some users edit the details of all users
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.
Web Interface
- Repercussions of changing the tracker schema
- How requests are processed
- Roundup URL design
- Determining web context
- The “home” Context
- Serving static content
- Performing actions in web requests
- Special form variables
- Default templates
- How the templates work
- Information available to templates
- Displaying Properties
- Index Views
- Searching Views
- Item Views
- Defining new web actions
- 8-bit character set support in Web interface
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.
Repercussions of changing the tracker schema
If you choose to change the tracker schema you will need to ensure the web interface knows about it:
- Index, item and search pages for the relevant classes may need to have properties added or removed,
- The “page” template may require links to be changed, as might the “home” page’s content arguments.
How requests are processed
The basic processing of a web request proceeds as follows:
- figure out who we are, defaulting to the “anonymous” user
- figure out what the request is for - we call this the “context”
- handle any requested action (item edit, search, ...)
- render the template requested by the context, resulting in HTML output
In some situations, exceptions occur:
HTTP Redirect (generally raised by an action)
- SendFile (generally raised by determine_context)
here we serve up a FileClass “content” property
- SendStaticFile (generally raised by determine_context)
here we serve up a file from the tracker “html” directory
- Unauthorised (generally raised by an action)
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
- NotFound (raised wherever it needs to be)
this exception percolates up to the CGI interface that called the client
Roundup URL design
Each tracker has several hardcoded URLs. These three are equivalent and lead to the main tracker page:
- /
- /index
- /home
The following prefix is used to access static resources:
- /@@file/
All other URLs depend on the classes configured in Roundup database. Each class receives two URLs - one for the class itself and another for specific items of that class. Example for class URL:
- /issue
This is usually used to show listings of class items. The URL for for specific object of issue class with id 1 will look like:
- /issue1
Determining web context
To determine the “context” of a request (what request is for), we look at the URL path after the tracker root and at @template request parameter. Typical URL paths look like:
- /tracker/issue
- /tracker/issue1
- /tracker/@@file/style.css
- /cgi-bin/roundup.cgi/tracker/file1
- /cgi-bin/roundup.cgi/tracker/file1/kitten.png
where tracker root is /tracker/ or /cgi-bin/roundup.cgi/tracker/ We’re looking at “issue”, “issue1”, “@@file/style.css”, “file1” and “file1/kitten.png” in the cases above.
- with is no path we are in the “home” context. See the “home” context below for details. “index” or “home” paths may also be used to switch into “home” context.
- for paths starting with “@@file” the additional path entry (“style.css” in the example above) specifies the static file to be served from the tracker TEMPLATES directory (or STATIC_FILES, if configured). This is usually the tracker’s “html” directory. Internally this works by raising SendStaticFile exception.
- if there is something in the path (as in example 1, “issue”), it identifies the tracker class to display.
- if the path is an item designator (as in examples 2 and 4, “issue1” and “file1”), then we’re to display a specific item.
- if the path starts with an item designator and is longer than one entry (as in example 5, “file1/kitten.png”), then we’re assumed to be handling an item of a FileClass, and the extra path information gives the filename that the client is going to label the download with (i.e. “file1/kitten.png” is nicer to download than “file1”). This raises a SendFile exception.
Neither b. or e. use templates and stop before the template is determined. For other contexts the template used is specified by the @template variable, which defaults to:
- only classname suplied: “index”
- full item designator supplied: “item”
The “home” Context
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
Serving static content
See the previous section determining web context where it describes @@file paths.
Performing actions in web requests
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:
- login
- Attempt to log a user in.
- logout
- Log the user out - make them “anonymous”.
- register
- Attempt to create a new user based on the contents of the form and then log them in.
- edit
- Perform an edit of an item in the database. There are some special form variables you may use.
- new
- Add a new item to the database. You may use the same special form variables as in the “edit” action.
- retire
- Retire the item in the database.
- editCSV
- Performs an edit of all of a class’ items in one go. See also the class.csv templating method which generates the CSV data to be edited, and the '_generic.index' template which uses both of these features.
- search
Mangle some of the form variables:
- Set the form “:filter” variable based on the values of the filter variables - if they’re set to anything other than “dontcare” then add them to :filter.
- Also handle the “:queryname” variable and save off the query to the user’s query list.
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:
- login
- Determine whether the user has the “Web Access” Permission.
- logout
- No permission checks are made.
- register
- Determine whether the user has the (“Create”, “user”) Permission.
- edit
- Determine whether the user has permission to edit this item. If we’re editing the “user” class, users are allowed to edit their own details - unless they try to edit the “roles” property, which requires the special Permission “Web Roles”.
- new
- Determine whether the user has permission to create this item. No additional property checks are made. Additionally, new user items may be created if the user has the (“Create”, “user”) Permission.
- editCSV
- Determine whether the user has permission to edit this class.
- search
- Determine whether the user has permission to view this class.
Special form variables
Item properties and their values are edited with html FORM variables and their values. You can:
- Change the value of some property of the current item.
- Create a new item of any class, and edit the new item’s properties,
- Attach newly created items to a multilink property of the current item.
- Remove items from a multilink property of the current item.
- Specify that some properties are required for the edit operation to be successful.
- Set up user interface locale.
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:
- @language
- value may be locale name or none. If this variable is set to locale name, web interface language is changed to given value (provided that appropriate translation is available), the value is stored in the browser cookie and will be used for all following requests. If value is none the cookie is removed and the language is changed to the tracker default, set up in the tracker configuration or OS environment.
- @charset
- value may be character set name or none. Character set name is stored in the browser cookie and sets output encoding for all HTML pages generated by Roundup. If value is none the cookie is removed and HTML output is reset to Roundup internal encoding (UTF-8).
Most properties are specified as form variables:
- <propname>
- property on the current context item
- <designator>"@"<propname>
- property on the indicated item (for editing related information)
Designators name a specific item of a class.
- <classname><N>
- Name an existing item of class <classname>.
- <classname>"-"<N>
- Name the <N>th new item of class <classname>. If the form submission is successful, a new item of <classname> is created. Within the submitted form, a particular designator of this form always refers to the same new item.
Once we have determined the “propname”, we look at it to see if it’s special:
- @required
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.
- @remove@<propname>=id(s) or @add@<propname>=id(s)
- The “@add@” and “@remove@” edit actions apply only to Multilink properties. The form value must be a comma-separate list of keys for the class specified by the simple form variable. The listed items are added to (respectively, removed from) the specified property.
- @link@<propname>=<designator>
- If the edit action is “@link@”, the simple form variable must specify a Link or Multilink property. The form value is a comma-separated list of designators. The item corresponding to each designator is linked to the property given by simple form variable.
- None of the above (ie. just a simple form value)
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:
- @note
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.
- @file
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.
Default templates
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:
- page.html
- This template usually defines the overall look of your tracker. When you view an issue, it appears inside this template. When you view an index, it also appears inside this template. This template defines a macro called “icing” which is used by almost all other templates as a coating for their content, using its “content” slot. It also defines the “head_title” and “body_title” slots to allow setting of the page title.
- home.html
- the default page displayed when no other page is indicated by the user
- home.classlist.html
- a special version of the default page that lists the classes in the tracker
- classname.item.html
- displays an item of the classname class
- classname.index.html
- displays a list of classname items
- classname.search.html
- displays a search page for classname items
- _generic.index.html
- used to display a list of items where there is no *classname*.index available
- _generic.help.html
- used to display a “class help” page where there is no *classname*.help
- user.register.html
- a special page just for the user class, that renders the registration page
- style.css
- a static file that is served up as-is
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.
How the templates work
Templating engines
Since version 1.4.20 Roundup supports two templating engines: the original Template Attribute Language (TAL) engine from Zope and the standalone Chameleon templating engine. Chameleon is intended as a replacement for the original TAL engine, and supports the same syntax, but they are not 100% compatible. The major (and most likely the only) incompatibility is the default expression type being python: instead of path:. See also “Incompatibilities and differences” section of Chameleon documentation.
NOTE1: For historical reasons, examples given below assumes path expression as default expression type. With Chameleon you have to manually resolve the path expressions. A Chameleon-based, z3c.pt, that is fully compatible with the old TAL implementation, is planned to be included in a future release.
NOTE2: As of 1.4.20 Chameleon support is highly experimental and not recommended for production use.
Basic Templating Actions
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:
- tal:define=”variable expression; variable expression; ...”
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.
- tal:condition=”expression”
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!).
- tal:repeat=”variable expression”
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.
- tal:replace=”expression”
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”.
- tal:content=”expression”
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>”.
- tal:attributes=”attribute expression; attribute expression; ...”
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”.
- tal:omit-tag=”expression”
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
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:
- Path Expressions - eg. item/status/checklist
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.
- String Expressions - eg. string:hello ${user/name}
- These expressions are simple string interpolations - though they can be just plain strings with no interpolation if you want. The expression in the ${ ... } is just a path expression as above.
- Python Expressions - eg. python: 1+1
- These expressions give the full power of Python. All the “root level” variables are available, so python:item.status.checklist() would be equivalent to item/status/checklist, assuming that checklist is a method.
Modifiers:
- structure - eg. structure python:msg.content.plain(hyperlink=1)
- The result of expressions are normally escaped to be safe for HTML display (all “<”, “>” and “&” are turned into special entities). The structure expression modifier turns off this escaping - the result of the expression is now assumed to be HTML, which is passed to the web browser for rendering.
- not: - eg. not:python:1=1
- This simply inverts the logical true/false value of another expression.
Template Macros
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:
- metal:define-macro=”macro name”
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.
- metal:use-macro=”path expression”
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.
- metal:define-slot=”slot name” and metal:fill-slot=”slot name”
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).
Information available to templates
This is implemented by roundup.cgi.templating.RoundupPageTemplate
The following variables are available to templates.
- context
- The current context. This is either None, a hyperdb class wrapper or a hyperdb item wrapper
- request
- Includes information about the current request, including:
- the current index information (filterspec, filter args, properties, etc) parsed out of the form.
- methods for easy filterspec link generation
- “form” The current CGI form information as a mapping of form argument name to value (specifically a cgi.FieldStorage)
- “env” the CGI environment variables
- “base” the base URL for this instance
- “user” a HTMLItem instance for the current user
- “language” as determined by the browser or config
- “classname” the current classname (possibly None)
- “template” the current template (suffix, also possibly None)
- config
- This variable holds all the values defined in the tracker config.ini file (eg. TRACKER_NAME, etc.)
- db
- The current database, used to access arbitrary database items.
- templates
- Access to all the tracker templates by name. Used mainly in use-macro commands.
- utils
- This variable makes available some utility functions like batching.
- nothing
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>
- default
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>
- true, false
- Boolean constants that may be used in templating expressions instead of python:1 and python:0.
- i18n
Internationalization service, providing two string translation methods:
- gettext (message)
- Return the localized translation of message
- ngettext (singular, plural, number)
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
The context variable is one of three things based on the current context (see determining web context for how we figure this out):
- if we’re looking at a “home” page, then it’s None
- if we’re looking at a specific hyperdb class, it’s a hyperdb class wrapper.
- if we’re looking at a specific hyperdb item, it’s a hyperdb item wrapper.
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:
- the properties may have a real value behind them, and this will appear if the property is displayed through context/property or context/property/field.
- the context’s “id” property will be a false value in the second case, but a real, or true value in the third. Thus we can determine whether we’re looking at a real item from the hyperdb by testing “context/id”.
Hyperdb class wrapper
This is implemented by the roundup.cgi.templating.HTMLClass class.
This wrapper object provides access to a hyperdb 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.
Hyperdb item wrapper
This is implemented by the roundup.cgi.templating.HTMLItem class.
This wrapper object provides access to a hyperdb 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.
Hyperdb property wrapper
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:
- if accessed through a hyperdb item wrapper, then it’s a value from the hyperdb
- if access through a hyperdb class wrapper, then it’s a value from the CGI form
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.
The request variable
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
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.
The db variable
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.
The templates variable
This was implemented by the roundup.cgi.templating.Templates class before 1.4.20. In later versions it is the instance of appropriate template engine loader class.
This variable is used to access other templates in expressions and template macros. It doesn’t have any useful methods defined. The templates can be accessed 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
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. |
The utils variable
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).
Batching
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).
Translations
Should you wish to enable multiple languages in template content that you create you’ll need to add new locale files in the tracker home under a locale directory. Use the instructions in the developer's guide to create the locale files.
Displaying Properties
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.
Index Views
This is one of the class context views. It is also the default view for classes. The template used is “classname.index”.
Index View Specifiers
An index view specifier (URL fragment) looks like this (whitespace has been added for clarity):
/issue?status=unread,in-progress,resolved&
keyword=security,ui&
@group=priority,-status&
@sort=-activity&
@filters=status,keyword&
@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 “keyword” 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 “keyword” 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) |
Searching Views
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:
- sets up additional filtering, as well as performing indexed text searching
- sets the @filter variable correctly
- saves the query off if @query_name is set.
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. |
Item Views
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.
Editor 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.
Form values
We have a number of ways to pull properties out of the form in order to meet the various needs of:
- editing the current item (perhaps an issue item)
- editing information related to the current item (eg. messages or attached files)
- creating new information to be linked to the current item (eg. time spent on an issue)
In the following, <bracketed> values are variable, “:” may be one of “:” or “@”, and other text (“required”) is fixed.
Properties are specified as form variables:
- <propname>
- property on the current context item
- <designator>:<propname>
- property on the indicated item (for editing related information)
- <classname>-<N>:<propname>
- property on the Nth new item of classname (generally for creating new items to attach to the current item)
Once we have determined the “propname”, we check to see if it is one of the special form values:
- @required
- The named property values must be supplied or a ValueError will be raised.
- @remove@<propname>=id(s)
- The ids will be removed from the multilink property.
- :add:<propname>=id(s)
- The ids will be added to the multilink property.
- :link:<propname>=<designator>
- Used to add a link to new items created during edit. These are collected and returned in all_links. This will result in an additional linking operation (either Link set or Multilink append) after the edit/create is done using all_props in _editnodes. The <propname> on the current item will be set/appended the id of the newly created item of class <designator> (where <designator> must be <classname>-<N>).
Any of the form variables may be prefixed with a classname or designator.
Two special form values are supported for backwards compatibility:
- :note
- create a message (with content, author and date), linked to the context item. This is ALWAYS designated “msg-1”.
- :file
- create a file, attached to the current item and any message created by :note. This is ALWAYS designated “file-1”.
Spool Section
The spool section lists related information like the messages and files of an issue.
TODO
History Section
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.
Defining new web actions
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.
Define the new action class
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:
- add information to self.client.ok_message or self.client.error_message
- change the self.client.template variable to alter what the user will see next
- raise Unauthorised, SendStaticFile, SendFile, NotFound or Redirect exceptions (import them from roundup.cgi.exceptions)
Register the action class
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.
Use the new action
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 may return content to the user
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).
8-bit character set support in Web interface
The web interface uses UTF-8 default. It may be overridden in both forms and a browser cookie.
- In forms, use the @charset variable.
- To use the cookie override, have the roundup_charset cookie set.
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.
Examples
- Changing what’s stored in the database
- Using External User Databases
- Changes to Tracker Behaviour
- Changes to Security and Permissions
- Changes to the Web User Interface
- Adding action links to the index page
- Colouring the rows in the issue index according to priority
- Editing multiple items in an index view
- Displaying only message summaries in the issue display
- Enabling display of either message summaries or the entire messages
- Setting up a “wizard” (or “druid”) for controlled adding of issues
Changing what’s stored in the database
The following examples illustrate ways to change the information stored in the database.
Adding a new field to the classic schema
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"), keyword=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;
Adding a new constrained field to the classic schema
This example shows how to add a new constrained property (i.e. a selection of distinct values) to your tracker.
Introduction
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).
Adding a field to the database
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.
Populating the new category class
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
Setting up security on the new objects
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.
Changing the web left hand frame
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.
Setting up a page to edit categories
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).
Adding the category to the issue
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.
Searching on 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:
- search_select expands to a drop-down box with all categories using db_klass and db_content.
- column_input expands to a checkbox for selecting what columns should be displayed.
- sort_input expands to a radio button for selecting what property should be sorted on.
- group_input expands to a radio button for selecting what property should be grouped on.
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>
Adding category to the default view
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.
Adding a time log to your issues
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"), keyword=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">
Tracking different types of issues
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"), keyword=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.
Using External User Databases
Using an external password validation source
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.