If you can’t see the video above, please go to mfabrik.fi.
mFabrik will participate in INTERNET EXPO which is the biggest “Internet fair event” in Finland. Topics include e.g. social media, sematic web and IT security. Many major Internet companies and their products will be present.
Our expo representatives, as in the video above, will gladly help you to tell about mobile and CMS solutions.
You can get free tickets using the code provided on mfabrik.fi page.
Few days ago Fabio announced Django plug-in for Eclipse. There also exists an effort to make Eclipse integrate smoother with Plone / Zope / Buildout world.
Please see PyPi page here.
It is not nearly as polished as Fabio’s work, as Fabio being main author of PyDev and started as a collection of company internal tools. However if you mare making many buildouts, write code > 5 Python modules at once and don’t want to start terminal everytime you need to run buildout, this plug-in is for you.
Also, it is not yet a real plug-in. It is a collection of PythonMonkey scripts. This means that to deploy the scripts you simply copy .py files them to scripts folder of any of your Eclipse projects. If you need to work on the codebase, you don’t need to start a separate Eclipse instance, but you can do it interactively through Eclipse console while you do other development. The script source code is well commented, so if you want to tune them for your own habits it should be easy.
XDV is an external HTML theming engine, a.k.a. theming proxy, which allows you to mix and match HTML and CSS from internal and external sites by using simple XML rules. It separates the theme development from the site development, so that people with little HTML and CSS knowledge can create themes without need to know underlying Python, PHP or whatever. It also enables integration of different services and sites to one, unified, user experience. For example, XDV is used by plone.org <http://plone.org> to integrate Plone CMS and Trac issue tracker. XDV compiles theming rules to XSL templates, which has been a standard XML based templates language since 1999. XSL has good support in every programming language and web server out there. Example backends to perform XSL transformation include
XDV theming can be used together with Plone where enhanced support is provided by collective.xdv package package. Technically, collective.xdv adds Plone settings panel and does XSL transformation in Zope’s post-publication hook using lxml library. XDV can be used standalone with XDV package to theme any web site, let it be WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or custom in-house PHP solution from year 2000. XDV is based on Deliverance specification The difference between XDV and Deliverance reference implementation is that XDV internally compiles themes to XSL templates, when Deliverance relies on processing HTML in Python. Currently XDV approach seems to be working better, as we had many problems trying to apply Deliverance for WordPress site (redirects didn’t work, HTTP posts didn’t work, etc.).
XDV tools are deployed as Python eggs. You can use tools like buildout <http://www.buildout.org/> configuration and assembly tool or easy_install to get XDV on your development computer and the server. If you are working with Plone you can integrate XDV to your site existing buildout. If you are not working with Plone, XDV home page has instructions how to deploy XDV command standalone.
Rules (rules.xml) will tell how to fit content from external source to your theme HTML. It provides straightforward XML based syntax to manipulate HTML easily
Rules XML syntax is documented at XDV homepage. Rules will be compiled to XSL template (theme.xsl) by xdvcompiler command. The actual theming is done by one of the XSL backends listed above, by taking HTML as input and applying XSL transformations on it. Note that currently rules without matching selectors are silently ignored and there is no bullet-proof way to debug what happens inside XSL transformation, except by looking into compiled theme.xsl.
Below are instructions how to integrate a WordPress site to your CMS. In this example CMS is Plone, but it could be any other system. We will create XDV theme which will theme WordPress site to match our CMS site in the fly.
WordPress theme using built with XDV and using a live Plone web page as a theme template. This way WordPress theme inherits “live data” from Plone site, like top tabs (portal sections), footer, CSS and other stuff which can be changed in-the-fly and reflecting changes to two separaet theming products would be cumbersome. Benefits using WordPress for blogging instead of main CMS
Benefits of using XDV theming instead of creating native WordPress theme are
The theme will consist of following pieces
This explains how to create a Plone page template where WordPress content will be dropped in. This step is not necessary, as we could do this without touching the Plone. However, it makes things more straightforward and explicit when we known that WordPress theme uses a certain template and we explicitly define slots for WordPress content there. Example:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"
xmlns:tal="http://xml.zope.org/namespaces/tal"
xmlns:metal="http://xml.zope.org/namespaces/metal"
xmlns:i18n="http://xml.zope.org/namespaces/i18n"
lang="en"
metal:use-macro="here/main_template/macros/master"
i18n:domain="plone">
<body>
<div metal:fill-slot="content">
<div id="wordpress-content">
<!-- Your WordPress "left column" will go there -->
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Following are XDV rules (rules.xml) how we will fit WordPress site to Plone frame. It will integrate
rules.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rules xmlns="http://namespaces.plone.org/xdv"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:css="http://namespaces.plone.org/xdv+css">
<!-- Remove WordPress CSS by filtering out <style> tags-->
<drop css:content="style" />
<!-- Make sure that WordPress metadata is present in <head> section -->
<append css:content="head link" css:theme="head" />
<!-- note: replace does not seem to handle multiple meta tags very well -->
<drop css:theme="meta" />
<append css:content="head meta" css:theme="head" />
<!-- Use blog title instead of Plone page title -->
<replace css:content="title" css:theme="title" />
<!-- Put WordPress sidebar to Plone's portlets section -->
<append css:content="#r_sidebar" css:theme="#portal-column-one .visualPadding" />
<!-- Place wordpress content into our theme content area -->
<copy css:content="#contentleft" css:theme="#wordpress-content" />
<!-- This mixes in WordPress specific CSS sheet which is applied for pages
served from WordPress only and does not concern Plone CMS.
This stylesheet will theme WordPress specific tags,
like blog posts and comment fields.
We keep this file in Plone, but this could be served from elsewhere. -->
<append css:theme="head">
<style type="text/css">
@import url(http://mfabrik.com/++resource++plonetheme.mfabrik/wordpress.css);
</style>
</append>
<!-- This stylesheet is used by special spam protection plug-in NoSpamNX -->
<append css:theme="head">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://blog.mfabrik.com/wp-content/plugins/nospamnx/nospamnx.css" type="text/css" />
</append>
<!-- Remove Google Analytics script used for CMS site -->
<drop css:theme="#page-bottom script" />
<!-- Rebuild our Google Analytics code, using a different tracker id this time
which is a specific to our blog.
-->
<append css:theme="#page-bottom">
<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-8819100-2");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {
}
</script>
</append>
</rules>
This CSS has styles which are applied only to WordPress pages. They are mainly corner case fixes where WordPress and CMS styles must match. The CSS file is loaded when rules.xml injects it to <head> section. wordpress.css:
/* Font and block style fixes */
#wordpress-content h1 {
border: 0;
}
#wordpress-content .post-end {
margin-bottom: 60px;
}
#wordpress-content pre {
width: 600px;
overflow: auto;
background: white;
border: 1px solid #888;
}
#wordpress-content ul {
margin-left: 20px;
}
#wordpress-content .post-info-date,
#wordpress-content .post-info-categories,
#wordpress-content .post-info-tags {
font-size: 80%;
color: #888;
}
/* Make sure that posts and comments look sane in our theme */
#wordpress-content .post {
margin-top: 15px;
}
#wordpress-content .commentlist li {
margin: 20px;
background: white;
padding: 10px;
}
#wordpress-content .commentlist li img {
float: left;
margin-right: 20px;
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
#wordpress-content #commentform {
margin: 20px;
}
#wordpress-content {
margin-left: 20px;
margin-right: 20px;
}
/* Make WordPress "sidebaar" look like Plone "portlets */
.template-wordpress_listing #portal-column-one ul {
list-style: none;
margin-bottom: 40px;
}
.template-wordpress_listing #portal-column-one ul#Recent li {
margin-bottom: 8px;
}
.template-wordpress_listing #portal-column-one ul#Categories a {
line-height: 120%;
}
.template-wordpress_listing #portal-column-one h2 {
background: transparent;
border: 0;
font-weight:normal;
line-height:1.6em;
padding:0;
text-transform:none;
font-size: 16px;
color: #9b9b9b;
border-bottom:4px solid #CDCDCD;
}
The following Python script (xdv.py) makes it easy for us
xdv.py:
"""
This command line Python script compiles your rules.xml to XDV XSL
Modify it for your own needs.
It assumes your buildout.cfg has xdv section and generated XDV
commands under bin/
To compile, execute in the buildout folder::
python src/plonetheme.mfabrik/xdv.py
To build test HTML::
python src/plonetheme.mfabrik/xdv.py --test
To build test HTML and preview it in browser, execute in buildout folder::
python src/plonetheme.mfabrik/xdv.py --preview
"""
import getopt, sys
import os
import webbrowser
# rules XML for theming
RULES_XML = "src/plonetheme.mfabrik/deliverance/etc/rules.xml"
# Which XSL file to generate for compiled XDV
OUTPUT_FILE = "theme.xsl"
# Which file to generate applied theme test runs
TEST_HTML_FILE = "test.html"
# Our "theme.html" is a remote template served for each request.
# Because we are doing live integrattion, this is a HTTP resource,
# not a local file.
THEME="http://mfabrik.com/news/wordpress_listing/"
#
# External site you are theming.
# Note: must have ending slash (lxm cannot handle redirects)
#
SITE="http://blog.twinapex.fi/"
try:
opts, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "pt", ["preview", "test"])
except getopt.GetoptError, err:
# print help information and exit:
print str(err) # will print something like "option -a not recognized"
# Convert options to simple list
opts = [ opt for opt, value in opts ]
print "Compiling transformation"
value = os.system("bin/xdvcompiler -o " + OUTPUT_FILE + " " + RULES_XML +" " + THEME)
if value != 0:
print "Compilation failed"
sys.exit(1)
if "-p" in opts or "--preview" in opts or "-t" in opts or "--test" in opts:
print "Generating test HTML page"
value = os.system("bin/xdvrun -o " + TEST_HTML_FILE + " " + OUTPUT_FILE + " " + SITE)
if value != 0:
print "Page transformation failed"
sys.exit(1)
if "-p" in opts or "--preview" in opts:
# Preview the result in a browser
# NOTE: OSX needs Python >= 2.5 to make this work
# Make sure test run succeeded
url = "file://" + os.path.abspath(TEST_HTML_FILE)
print "Opening:" + url
# We prefer Firefox for preview for its superious
# Firebug HTML debugger and XPath rule generator
try:
browser = webbrowser.get("firefox")
except webbrowser.Error:
# No FF on the system, or OSX which can't find its browsers
browser = webbrowser.get()
browser.open_new_tab(url)
This will generate XSL templates to do theming transform. It will compile rules XML with some boilerplate XSL. Running our compile script:
python src/plonetheme.mfabrik/xdv.py
Since Plone usually does not use any relative paths or relative resources in HTML, we do not give the parameter “Absolute prefix” to the compilation stage. In Plone, everything is mapped through a virtual hosting aware resource locator: portal_url and VirtualHostMonster. For more information see
The following command will apply theme for an example external page:
bin/xdvrun -o theme.html theme.xsl http://blog.twinapex.fi firefox theme.xhtml
… or we can use shortcut provided by our script …
python src/plonetheme.mfabrik/xdv.py --preview
These steps tell how to apply the integration theme for WordPress when WordPress is running under Apache virtualhost.
We use Apache and mod_transform. Instructions how to set up modules for Apache are available on XDV homepage. Some hand-build modules must be used, but instructions to set them up for Ubuntu / Debian are available. Apache 2 supports filter chains which allow you to perform magic on HTTP response before sending it out. This corresponds Python’s WSGI middleware. We’ll use special built of mod_transform and mod_depends which are known to working. These modules were forked from their orignal creations to make them XDV compatible, as the orignal has not been updated since 2004 (here you can nicely see how open source guarantees “won’t run out of support” freedom).
Example:
sudo -i apt-get install libxslt1-dev libapache2-mod-apreq2 libapreq2-dev apache2-threaded-dev wget http://html-xslt.googlecode.com/files/mod-transform-html-xslt.tgz wget http://html-xslt.googlecode.com/files/mod-depends-html-xslt.tgz tar -xzf mod-transform-html-xslt.tgz tar -xzf mod-depends-html-xslt.tgz cd mod-depends-html-xslt ; ./configure ; make ; make install ; cd .. cd mod-transform-html-xslt ; ./configure ; make ; make install ; cd ..
Enable built-in Apache modules:
a2enmod filter a2enmod ext_filter
For modules depends and transform you need to manually add them to the end of Apache configuration, as they do not provide a2enmod stubs for Debian. Edit /etc/apache2/apache.conf:
LoadModule depends_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_depends.so LoadModule transform_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_transform.so
You need to hard reset Apache to make the new modules effective:
/etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload
Below is our virtualhost configuration which runs WordPress and PHP. Transformation filter chain has been added in. /etc/apache/sites-enabled/blog.mfabrik.com:
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName blog.mfabrik.com
ServerAdmin info@mfabrik.com
LogFormat combined
TransferLog /var/log/apache2/blog.mfabrik.com.log
# Basic WordPress setup
Options +Indexes FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
DocumentRoot /srv/www/wordpress
<Directory /srv/www/wordpress>
Options FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php3 .php4 .php5
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
# Theming set-up
# This chain is used for public web pages
FilterDeclare THEME
FilterProvider THEME XSLT resp=Content-Type $text/html
TransformOptions +ApacheFS +HTML
# This is the location of compiled XSL theme transform
TransformSet /theme.xsl
# This will make Apache not to reload transformation every time
# it is performed. Instead, a compiled version is hold in the
# virtual URL declared above.
TransformCache /theme.xsl /srv/plone/twinapex.fi/theme.xsl
# We want to apply theme only for
# 1. public pages (otherwise WordPress administrative interface stops working)
<Location "/">
FilterChain THEME
</Location>
# 2. Admin interface and feeds should not receive any kind of theming
<LocationMatch "(wp-login|wp-admin|wp-includes)">
# The following resets the filter chain
# http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_filter.html#filterchain
FilterChain !
</LocationMatch>
</VirtualHost>
After Apache has all modules enabled and your virtualhost configuration is ok, you should see WordPress through your new theme by visiting at the site served through Apache:
The theme should be recompiled every time
This is because the compilation will hard-link resources and template snippets to resulting the theme.xsl file. If hard-linked resources change on the Plone site, the transformation XSL file does not automatically reflect back the changes. It could be possible to use Plone events automatically to rerun theme compilation when concerned resources change. However, the would be quite complex. For now, we are satisfied with a scheduled task which will recompile the theme now and then. Alternatively, mod_transforms could be run in non-cached mode with some performance implications. Here is a shell script, update-wordpress-theme.sh, which will perform the recompilation and make Apache’s transformation cache aware of changes:
#!/bin/sh # # Periodically update WordPress theme to reflect changes on CMS site # # Recompile theme sudo -H -u twinapex /bin/sh -c cd /srv/plone/twinapex.fi ; python src/plonetheme.mfabrik/xdv.py # Make Apache aware of theme changes sudo apache2ctl graceful
Then we call it periodically in cron job, every 15 minutes in /etc/cron.d/update-wordpress:
# Make WordPress XDV theme to reflect changes on CMS 0,15,30,45 * * * * /srv/plone/twinapex.fi/update-wordpress-theme.sh
No changes on WordPress needed if the domain name is not changed in the theme transformation process.
Unlike Plone, WordPress does not have decent virtual hosting machinery. It knowns only one URL which is uses to refer to the site in the external context (e.g. RSS feeds). This setting can be overridden in
Here is an example how we override this in our wp-config.php:
// http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#WordPress_address_.28URL.29
define('WP_HOME','http://blog.mfabrik.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','http://blog.mfabrik.com');
Http 404 Not Found responses are not themed by Apache filter chain. This is not possible due to order of pipeline in Apache. As a workaround you can set up a custom HTTP 404 page in WordPress which does not expose the old theme.
<html>
<head>
<title>Not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Not Found, Error 404</h1>
<p>Aaaaw, snap! The page you are looking for no longer exists. It must be our hamster who ate it.</p>
<a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">Go to blog homepage</a>
<a href="http://mfabrik.com">mFabrik business site</a>
</body>
</html>
For more information see
Below is a checklist you need to go to through to confirm that the theme integration works on your production site
