Editing Zope (section)

===Zope 2===

A Zope [[website]] is usually composed of objects in a [[Zope Object Database]], not files on a [[file system]], as is usual with most [[web server]]s. This allows users to harness the advantages of object technologies, such as [[Information hiding|encapsulation]]. Zope maps [[Uniform Resource Locator|URL]]s to objects using the containment hierarchy of such objects; methods are considered to be contained in their objects as well. Data can be stored in other databases as well, or on the file system, but ZODB is the most common solution.

Zope provides two mechanisms for [[HTML]] templating: Document Template Markup Language (DTML) and Zope Page Templates (ZPT). DTML is a [[tag-based language]] that allows implementation of simple scripting in the templates. DTML has provisions for variable inclusion, conditions, and loops. However, DTML can be problematic: DTML tags interspersed with HTML form non-valid HTML documents, and its use requires care when including logic into templates, to retain code readability. The use of DTML is discouraged by many leading Zope developers. ZPT is a technology that addresses the shortcomings of DTML. ZPT templates can be either well-formed [[XML]] documents or HTML documents, in which all special markup is presented as attributes in the TAL ([[Template Attribute Language]]) namespace. ZPT offers a very limited set of tools for conditional inclusion and repetition of XML elements. Consequently, the templates are usually quite simple, with most logic implemented in Python code. One significant advantage of ZPT templates is that they can be edited in most graphical HTML editors. ZPT also offers direct support for [[Internationalization and localization|internationalization]].

Zope 2 underlies the [[Plone (content management system)|Plone]] [[content management system]], as well as the [[ERP5]] open source [[enterprise resource planning]] system.