What this package do?

IMS VDEX is a standard for exchanging vocabularies. collective.vdexvocabulary bridges between vdex vocabularies and zope vocabularies (zope.schema.vocabularies), so you can easily use it in systems like Plone/ Zope, Pyramid or any other Zope-Toolkit supporting system.

Whats so special about it?

collective.vdexvocabulary contains two different types of vocabularies:

1. If you have big vocabularies with a lot of relations, like +10.000 terms with +30.000 relations, so this would be perfect use case to use the VdexVocabulary type of collective.vdexvocabulary.
2. If you have tree-like vocabularies this is perfect too. TreeVocabulary supports nested/ hierachical vocabularies.

Also there is other stuff which not supported by other vocabulary packages (i.e. for Plone/Zope):

• i18n support. IMS VDEX supports translations within the VDEX-XML-File, both vocabulary types are supporting this way of translations.
• proper order also with unicode characters (if zope.ucol is installed, vdexvocabulary only). If VDEX is order-sigificant the order given by vdex file is taken (supported by both vocabulary types).
• easy registration using zcml
• relations as it specified in IMS VDEX standard (for now only VdexVocabulary)

How do I use it?

Configuration

In your configure.zcml add:

<configure
    ...
    xmlns:vdex="http://namespaces.zope.org/vdex"
    ...>

  <include package="collective.vdexvocabulary" file="meta.zcml" />
  <include package="collective.vdexvocabulary" />

And to register a vdex vocabulary simply add line bellow pointing to file containing vdex vocabulary:

<configure
    ...
    xmlns:vdex="http://namespaces.zope.org/vdex"
    ...>

  <vdex:vocabulary file="path-to/very-interesting.xml" />

or for tree vocabularies:

<vdex:treevocabulary file="path-to/very-interesting-tree.xml" />

To make registration of vocabularies even easier you can also register several vocabularies and just point to directory:

<configure
    ...
    xmlns:vdex="http://namespaces.zope.org/vdex"
    ...>

  <vdex:vocabulary directory="path-to/my-vdex-vocabularies" />

or for tree vocabularies:

<vdex:treevocabulary directory="path-to/my-vdex-vocabularies" />

vdex files in path-to/my-vdex-vocabularies directory should have ending .vdex to be recognized by vdex:vocabulary ZCML directive.

Sometimes you dont want VDEX-files inside your code tree. Therefore an environment variable can be given defining the base directory:

<vdex:vocabulary file="my-vocabulary.vdex: environment="VDEX_BASE_DIR" />

or for tree vocabularies:

<vdex:treevocabulary file="my-vocabulary.vdex: environment="VDEX_BASE_DIR" />

Before running the code with environment variable relative filenames/directories one has to set the environmant variable, i.e. do an export VDEX_BASE_DIR=/home/joe/vdex/ in order to make it look for the vdex at /home/joe/vdex/my-vocabulary.vdex.

Usage in Code

Vocabularies are named utiltiies in a zope-toolkit manner. The name is taken from the vdex file, its the vocabIdentifier.

Given a vocabulary with the name beeeurope (see tree example below) one has to get the utility using the zope component architecture way:

>>> from zope.component import getUtility
>>> from zope.schema.interfaces import IVocabularyFactory
>>> factory = zope.component.getUtility(IVocabularyFactory, 'beeeurope')

The factory returns on call a vocabulary. It expects a context, which can be None in our case. If you are in an application server pass here your current context. In case of flat vocabularies this is used to detect the language, for tree vocabularies it is ignored, here an more advanced method is used to support i18n:

>>> context = None
>>> vocabulary = factory(context)

Now you can use the vocabulary:

>>> for term in vocabulary:
...     print term.value
...     print term.token
...     print term.title
...     print term.description

How to use tree-vocabularies

Once looked up as shown above traversing the tree is easy. It works as defined in zope.schema.interfaces.ITreeVocabulary. The term is also the key for the sublevel:

>>> def printlevel(leveldict, ident=0):
...     for term in leveldict:
...         print indent * '  ' + term.title
...         printlevel(leveldict[term], indent+1)

Hint: collective.dynatree uses this kind of vocabularies and can be used as an example for own implementations too.

How to access relations (from code)

Relations are defined by ISO2788.

To get listing of BMW car models from above VDEX example you have to:

>>> from zope.schema.vocabulary import getVocabularyRegistry

>>> vr = getVocabularyRegistry()
>>> car_manufacturers = vr.get(self.context, 'your.package.car_manufacturers')
>>> car_models = vr.get(self.context, 'your.package.car_models')

>>> bmw = car_manufacturers.getTerm('bmw')
>>> bmw_car_models = bmw.related.get('NT', [])

Example VDEX file

Flat with with relations

Example of car manufacturers list (car_manufacturers.vdex).:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<vdex xmlns="http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsvdex_v1p0"
      orderSignificant="false" language="en">
    <vocabIdentifier>your.package.car_manufacturers</vocabIdentifier>
    <term>
        <termIdentifier>ford</termIdentifier>
        <caption>
            <langstring language="en">Ford</langstring>
            <langstring language="es">Una miedra de coche</langstring>
        </caption>
    </term>
    <term>
        <termIdentifier>bmw</termIdentifier>
        <caption>
            <langstring language="en">BMW</langstring>
            <langstring language="es">Be-eMe-uWe, mierda</langstring>
        </caption>
    </term>

    <relationship>
        <sourceTerm>bmw</sourceTerm>
        <targetTerm vocabIdentifier="your.package.car_models">very-special-bmw-model</targetTerm>
        <relationshipType source="http://www.imsglobal.org/vocabularies/iso2788_relations.xml">NT</relationshipType>
    </relationship>

    ...

</vdex>

List of car models (car_models.vdex).:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<vdex xmlns="http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsvdex_v1p0"
      orderSignificant="false" language="en">
    <vocabIdentifier>your.package.car_models</vocabIdentifier>

    <term>
        <termIdentifier>very-special-bmw-model</termIdentifier>
        <caption>
            <langstring language="en">Very special BMW model</langstring>
            <langstring language="es">Un modelo de Be-eMe-uWe</langstring>
        </caption>
    </term>

    <relationship>
        <sourceTerm>very-special-bmw-model</sourceTerm>
        <targetTerm vocabIdentifier="your.package.car_manufacturers">bmw</targetTerm>
        <relationshipType source="http://www.imsglobal.org/vocabularies/iso2788_relations.xml">BT</relationshipType>
    </relationship>

...

</vdex>

Hierachical Tree

example of a tree vocabulary:

<vdex xmlns="http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsvdex_v1p0" orderSignificant="true">
  <vocabIdentifier>beeeurope</vocabIdentifier>
  <vocabName>
    <langstring language="en">European Honey Bees</langstring>
  </vocabName>
  <term>
    <termIdentifier>nwe</termIdentifier>
    <caption>
      <langstring language="en">North-west of Europe</langstring>
    </caption>
    <term>
      <termIdentifier>nwe.1</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. iberica</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
    <term>
      <termIdentifier>nwe.2</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. intermissa</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
    <term>
      <termIdentifier>nwe.3</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. lihzeni</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
    <term>
      <termIdentifier>nwe.4</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. mellifera</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
    <term>
      <termIdentifier>nwe.5</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. sahariensis</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
  </term>
  <term>
    <termIdentifier>swe</termIdentifier>
    <caption>
      <langstring language="en">South-west of Europe</langstring>
    </caption>
    <term>
      <termIdentifier>swe.1</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. carnica</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
    <term>
   <term>
      <termIdentifier>swe.2</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. cecropia</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
    <term>
      <termIdentifier>swe.3</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. ligustica</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
    <term>
      <termIdentifier>swe.4</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. macedonica</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
    <term>
      <termIdentifier>swe.5</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. ruttneri</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
    <term>
      <termIdentifier>swe.6</termIdentifier>
      <caption>
        <langstring language="en">A. m. sicula</langstring>
      </caption>
    </term>
  </term>
</vdex>

Where can I complain / help / send rum?

Home + Source

https://github.com/collective/collective.vdexvocabulary

Report Issues

https://github.com/collective/collective.vdexvocabulary/issues

Send rum

contact rok@garbas.si for more info

Credit

• Rok Garbas, http://garbas.si, <rok@garbas.si>, Author
• Seantis gmbh, http://www.seantis.ch Thank you for initial idea with seantis.vdex where got the idea and then reimplement and extend it.
• Jens W Klein, http://kleinundpartner.at, <jens@bluedynamics.com>, Cleanup, Treevocabulary/ i18n-support

TODO

• fetch vocab(s) via url (new directive)
• load vocabs view entry_points
• store vocabs (or changed vocabs in zodb), will probably also need diff and merge option
• write test and get decent test coverage
• write documentation
• make ZCML optional
• make through the web vdex editor (this would probably need sponsoring)
• add relation support to TreeVocabulary