Creating content types

Creating content types#

When we attempt to solve a particular content management problem with Plone, we will often design new content types. For the purpose of this example, we'll build a simple set of types to manage tasks.

  • We will use a content type Tasks to hold all task objects and present a list of tasks to the user. This type is folderish (Container).

  • We will use a content type Task with the information about the task. Fields include name, description, and status of the task. This type is non-folderish (Item).

Creating a Plone package#

We typically create a content type inside a Plone package. We will use the plonecli to create a Plone package and our content types.

plonecli create addon collective.tasks
cd collective.tasks

Adding content types#

Let's add a content type called Tasks:

plonecli add content_type

Fill in the name Tasks for the first content type:

-> Content type name (Allowed: _ a-z A-Z and whitespace) [Todo Task]: Tasks

We keep the default base class Container here:

--> Dexterity base class (Container/Item) [Container]:

We keep the default globally addable:

--> Should the content type globally addable? [y]:

We want to filter content types, which can be added to this container:

--> Should we filter content types to be added to this container? [n]: y

We keep the default behaviors active:

--> Activate default behaviors? [y]:

Now let's add a content type called Task:

plonecli add content_type

Fill in the name Task for the first content type:

-> Content type name (Allowed: _ a-z A-Z and whitespace) [Todo Task]: Task

We change the base class to Item here:

--> Dexterity base class (Container/Item) [Container]: Item

We don't want it to be globally addable globally addable:

--> Should the content type globally addable? [y]: n

If we disable globally addable, the next question will ask for the parent content type, where we will answer Tasks:

--> Parent container portal_type name: Tasks

For the rest of the questions, we can keep the defaults.

To test our new Plone package and its content types, we can use plonecli to build a development environment and start Plone.

plonecli build
plonecli serve

Your Plone is now running on http://localhost:8080. You can add a new Plone site, enable your add-on, and add your content types.

See also

plonecli takes care of all the details of a content type and its configuration. For more configuration details, see Factory Type Information (FTI).

For now your content type doesn't have any custom schema with fields defined.

See Schemas, Fields and Widgets for information on how to add custom fields and widgets to your content type.

Also have a look at Plone Behaviors, which provide default features you can enable per content type.

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