Creating content types
Contents
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.