collective.editskinswitcher

Switch to the edit skin for certain domains.


License
GPL-2.0+
Install
pip install collective.editskinswitcher==3.2

Documentation

For a customer of Zest Software I [Maurits van Rees] created a package called collective.editskinswitcher. I gladly took some code from colleague Mark van Lent who did something similar for a different web site. The package is on the Python Package Index so it can be easy installed. And the code is in the Plone github collective.

collective.editskinswitcher 3.0 is compatible with Plone version 4.1 until and including 4.3. For earlier Plone versions please use collective.editskinswitcher 2.x.

Let's say you have a Plone Site. Anyway, whatever site you have is available on two urls: www.example.com and edit.example.com. Some day you should ask your local Apache guru how he did that.

With collective.editskinswitcher installed (with the portal quick installer), visitors that go to the website with the url edit.example.com will see the Editor Skin. (This can be set in a property, as we shall see later.) Visitors to www.example.com will see whatever skin you have set as the default skin in portal_skins. Can be pretty handy.

To avoid confusion: we will call what you have set as "default skin" the Visitor Skin. And the skin meant for editors we call the Editor Skin.

Developer types probably like the fact that you also get the Visitor Skin when visiting localhost and the Editor Skin when you go to 127.0.0.1.

You can also set a different default skin in a folder. So you can set it up so that folder-1 uses a red theme, folder-2 a blue theme and when you edit either folder you still use Sunburst Theme. See also the Per-folder default skin section.

There are some options you can set. Go to portal_properties, and then go to the editskin_switcher property sheet. These options are available:

  • edit_skin: set the skin that editors get. The default is "Plone Default".
  • switch_skin_action: choose the url condition that is used for switching to the edit skin. Note: this is a multiple select: if one of the selected options gives a positive result, then we switch to the edit skin. Options are:
    • based on edit URL: With this you get the behaviour described above. This is the default.
    • based on specific domain: If this is specified the edit skin is used when the first part of the url matches one of the entries in the specific_domains property. This url is the url for the root of the Plone Site; so usually this will be a domain, like http://special.example.com/. Note that you need to very explicitly use the exact url to your Plone Site root. For example, when trying this locally you may need something like this: http://localhost:8080/Plone
    • based on admin header: If this is chosen you will need to set up your proxy server, eg. Apache, to add a 'HTTP_PLONEADMIN' header to the request. It can do this based on the url for instance. An example is given in /tests/ploneadmin_header.txt
    • based on SSL: If this is chosen, then any urls that are SSL will get the edit skin and others will get the default skin.
    • No URL based switching: do not base the skin switching on the url; instead we check the need_authentication option.
  • need_authentication: when True you need to be logged in before your skin is switched. By default this is set to False. See the section Am I authenticated? below for some notes.
  • force_login_header: when the request has this header, only authenticated use is allowed. This does not actually switch the skin; you just get redirected to the login_form. By default this is set to the string X_FORCE_LOGIN. Note that this is not done for the login_form and other pages like that. Such a page probably looks ugly though, as you still are forced to login before you can get the css and images for that page.

If you combine the switch skin action and the authentication, then you need to have the right url and you need to be logged in.

When both are not used, nothing happens: then you might as well simply uninstall this product as it is not useful.

The need_authentication option looks for the __ac cookie that Plone gives you when logged in. There are a few possible problems with this:

  • Logging in via the Zope Management Interface is handled without cookies, so the editskin switcher regards you as anonymous then.
  • We do not check if the the cookie is actually valid. This can mostly give a surprise when you are developing multiple websites on your own local computer: Plone stores the __ac cookie for the localhost domain, without differentiating between multiple Plone sites. So if you are logged into Plone Site A on localhost with a cookie, then the skin switcher thinks you are authenticated for all websites on localhost.

Alternatively, we could check getSecurityManager().getUser(), but that check always thinks we are anonymous, presumably because our check is done during traversal, which apparently is too soon for anyone to be recognized as being logged in.

I looked at CMFUrlSkinSwitcher first but it had not been touched in two years. One import error (CMFCorePermissions) could easily be fixed as that import was not even used. But after that tests were failing all over the place. Theoretically always fixable of course, but rolling an own package seemed easier, cleaner and faster.

Also, CMFUrlSkinSwitcher does some more things. At least it messes around with some methods like absolute_url. It could be that I find out later that this is necessary in collective.editskinswitcher too, but currently it does not look like that will be the case.

The easiest way to test this package in a default plone site (apart from running the tests of course), is:

  • Install collective.editskinswitcher.
  • Go to portal_skins in the ZMI.
  • Create a new skin selection based on Sunburst Theme. Call this "Visitor Skin".
  • Make Visitor Skin the default skin.
  • Remove the custom skin layer from Sunburst Theme.
  • Customize the main template or the logo or something else that is easy to spot.
  • Visit 127.0.0.1:8080/plonesite and you will see default Plone.
  • Visit localhost:8080/plonesite and you will see Plone with your customization.

On Linux you can edit /etc/hosts and add a line like:

127.0.0.1 edit.example.com www.example.com

Now visiting edit.example.com should give you the Editor Skin and www.example.com should give you the Visitor Skin with the customizations.

You can also let the edit urls begin with cms or manage. As long as the url is something like:

...//(edit|cms|manage).something.something....

you end up in the edit skin.

The preview option allows you to see the default skin via the edit skin.

It does so by using an iframe which accesses the edit skin content but flips it to the default skin. This allows you to easily view previous versions, private content etc. as it will appear in the default skin if published.

This is particularly useful in cases where your default skin differs radically from the edit skin. It allows the edit interface to maintain some wysiwyg functionality.

Preview can either be used as a separate preview tab, or as a replacement for the view tab content in the edit skin.

Both are implemented within the tests folder and tested, but neither is used by default.

For the preview of editskinswitcher to be of use it requires an accompanying theme.egg holding the configuration for the default (and edit) skins. In order to use preview, it must be turned on within this accompanying theme egg. Example code to do this are within the tests folder.

Instructions for replacing view with preview are given in tests/skins/README.txt

To add it as a separate preview tab:

  1. Add the browser view by putting what is in testing.zcml in your theme egg configure.zcml or loading that file in the part of your buildout that creates the zope2instance, something like:

    zcml =
        collective.editskinswitcher-testing
    
  2. Within tests/add_preview.py there is ACTIONSCONFIG Add this as a profiles/default/actions.xml file. Change the default visible=False property to True. Or do it by hand by going to portal_actions, object, and adding a preview action with url expression string:${object_url}/@@preview.

Note that it looks like currently our ++resourece++iframe.js is not properly loaded, which in my tests unhelpfully makes the iframe about two centimeters high, though that probably depends on what you have set as the edit skin. If you use this feature and are hit by this bug and maybe even know how to fix it, contact me.

Selecting a default skin for a specific folder is also supported. A 'Skins' menu entry should show up in the content area, right next to the 'Display' and 'Actions' menu. Once you select a skin from that dropdown, it will be used as the default skin when visiting that folder instead of the site-wide default skin.

This menu is available for everyone who has the Set default skin permission, which by default is for Managers and Owners. So if you do not want anyone to have this menu, you can do so by not giving anyone this permission. In the rolemap.xml file of your GenericSetup profile that would look like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rolemap>
  <permissions>
   <permission name="Set default skin" acquire="False" />
  </permissions>
</rolemap>

Using the Per-folder default skin menu you already mostly have a to make simple subsites. The only other basic thing needed is to set the folder as a navigation root, so giving it the plone.app.layout.navigation.interfaces.INavigationRoot marker inferface. This option has now been added to the menu, guarded by new permission "Set navigation root", by default only for Manager.

For using collective.editskinswitcher with zc.buildout you have to add collective.editskinswitcher to the eggs section:

eggs = collective.editskinswitcher
...

Have fun!

Maurits van Rees