Zope editing and debugging with Boa

After working with it for more than a year now, I have come to the conclusion that Boa must be the best thing that happened to me, regarding Zope. Gone are the days of editing Zope documents in the ZMI!

Many people may see Boa as a Delphi like IDE for Python with GUI building functionality using wxWindows only. But, it is also an excellent tool for Zope development.

Boa has support for many of the standard Zope classes. The following objects can be created from the Explorer pane in Boa:

• Folders
• DTML Document
• DMTL Method
• External method
• Python Scripts
• File
• Page Templates
• Image
• Mailhost
• ZCatalog
• User Folder
• User
• Version
• SQLMethod
• GadflyDA
• Page Template

Since boa handles all "transports" the same (FTP, File System, Zope, etc.) the objects can be moved, copied and renamed in much the same way as one would do in an ordinary file explorer such as Window's file explorer.

Multiple Zope connections can be stored for later use and ease of connection to various Zope instances.

All objects can be inspected and attributes can be created in the object inspector (for those that support it). The text-like objects (eg. Page Template, DTML Document, etc.) are all editable in the standard Boa editor with code highliting for DTML, Page Templates and Python Scripts.

Boa also contains a powerful out of process debugger that can debug Python threads.

By installing a product and adding two external methods, the debugger enables one to debug Zope source, external methods, Zope products, Python Scripts and Page Templates (no stepping for Page Templates, only inspection). Source can be stepped through and variables can be inspected and altered while debugging.

Overall I have found Boa's performance over low bandwith connections to be better than the standard ZMI since it probably transfers less data (only source as opposed to the whole ZMI interface).

I can highly recommend Boa as a free, open source option for general Python and Zope development as it must be one of the best solutions around and certainly probably the best free IDE for Zope.