ToolBox

Status:Work in progress

Table of Contents

• ToolBox
  • Goal
  • Terminology
  • Features
  • Basic Gadgets
  • Spec
  • Write A Simple Gadget
  • Future Plans

Goal

A platform to share gadgets which helps the development.

Developer could release their own gadgets on pypi. The gadgets will be auto-plugged into the TurboGears 2 toolbox through setuptools.

ToolBox itself is a TurboGears 2 Application. Developers could use the same skills to develop a toolbox gadget as they do to createa a TurboGears 2 application.

Terminology

• Gadget: The application working within toolbox. Some of them may allow you to embed them into your application.

Features

• Provide ‘paster toolbox’ command to start.
• Provide a Gadget skeleton generator by paste script (not implement yet)
• You could release your own gadgets on pypi.
• Could detect if toolbox runs inside a project.
• Able to select icons from Tango Icon http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Library

Basic Gadgets

ToolBox 2 Basic Gadgets are a minimum set of gadgets to provide some basic functions.

• TGInfo gadget: browse tg2 related packages, similar to ‘paster tginfo’ command
• TurboGears 2 API gadget: browse tg2 API
• ToolBox 2 API gadget: browse ToolBox2 API
• Design gadget (Project Browser), update from ToolBox template browser gadget.
• Admin gadget (the successor to catwalk) from dbsprockets module

Spec

• Setuptool-based plugin system

You could define gadget hooker in setup.py:

 [turbogears2.toolboxcommand]

- To specify the Gadget should be worked in a TurboGears 2 project,
  you could define attribute in Gadget::

 need_project = True

Write A Simple Gadget

Create a folder containing 2 files:

setup.py
gadget.py

in setup.py:

from setuptools import setup, find_packages

setup(
  name='HelloGadget',
  version="1.0",
  description='TurboGears2 Toolbox Gadget',
  author='Fred Lin',
  install_requires=[
  "ToolBox2",
  ],
  include_package_data=True,
  package_data={'':['gadget.py']},
  entry_points="""
  [turbogears2.toolboxcommand]
  hello = gadget:HelloGadget
  """
)

in gadget.py:

from toolbox2.lib.base import Controller
from tg import expose

class HelloGadget(Controller):
    """TurboGears ToolBox Gadget.
       Show Hello World in ToolBox
    """
    __label__ ="Hello"
    __version__ = "1.0"
    __author__ = "Fred Lin"
    __email__ = "mymail+tg2[at]gmail.com"
    __copyright__ = "Copyright 2008 Fred Lin"
    __license__ = "MIT"
    __group__ = "Help"
    __icon__ = "places/start-here.png"
    need_project = False

    @expose()
    def index(self):
        return 'Hello ToolBox'

Debugging

Run:

$ python setup.py develop

or:

$ python setup.py install

to register your project to setuptools. Then you could run ‘paster toolbox’ to view your gadget!

Upload To Pypi

Run:

$ python setup.py register bdist_egg sdist --format=zip upload

to upload both egg and source code to pypi.

Remove Development Gadget

Run:

$ easy_install -m hello

Check ‘paster toolbox’ list and the hello gadget is gone.

Future Plans

• Widget Browser gadget by ToscaWidget (Browse widgets)
• upgrade MVC gadget with Source Highlight by ToscaWidget
• upgrade MVC gadget with Editor function inspired by web2py
• i18n Gadget
• With Authorization
• i18n
• Model Designer Gadget rewrite with ToscaWidgets
• Able to Custom tab
• able to Manage tab
• Able to custom app/tab