Screenshot of the main interface

Screenshot of the interface with tabs

View of the users with specific role for the chat

Give a specific Role to a user

ABOUT

This product is chat (interactive discussion tool) product for Zope/CMF/Plone.

DEPENDENCIES

• Zope 2.7
• Plone 2.0.5+
• Archetypes 1.3.3

INSTALL

• Untar it inside your Zope "Products" directory
• Install the product on your plone site with quickinstaller

OVERVIEW

• View tab :

Will allow you to discuss with other people connected in the chat room.

• Moderation Tab:

Will allow the moderator to accept or edit users messages. To edit a message just double click on it, a text area will be show. Changes will be done on validation. IMPORTANT : If your chat is set with moderation, 'defaut' users won't be able to discuss with other and will have to wait until a moderator review their message.

• Members:

Will allow you to choose who's going to moderate users.

• PloneChat Tool:

You can change the storage method between a text file (csv) and a database that you've already set up. (Check Storage section for better info)

• Portlet :

It will allow you to see members connected in any chat rooms anywhere in your plone site. You can put a portlet in your Plone Site properties by adding 'here/portlet_chat_users/macros/portlet' in left or right slot

STORAGE

• How to define the storage for your PloneChat ?

  For now, 2 storages are available : "sql", "csv".

  Once Product PloneChat is installed in a plone instance, it creates a tool named "portal_plone_chat". In the "Chat properties" tabs, there is a field named "plonechat_sql_conn". If you leave it empty, the CSV file storage will be used. Else, the string has to be a valid SQL Connector id. The PloneChatTool will create an instance of your chat storage.

• CSV Storage

  "csv" is the default storage, and will store all messages inside

  files in "$INSTANCE_HOME/var/Plonechat" in 3 files :

  • "chat_${chat_uid}.csv" : will store the last moderated messages (see the "maxMessageNumber" field to define the max size for this file);
  • "chat_${chat_uid}_pending.csv" : will store all unmoderated messages;
  • "chat_${chat_uid}.log" : will store all moderated messages;

• SQL Storage

The connector must have a connection to a database with a table named "plonechat_logs". The table is created upon storage creation, your sql connector must have the right to create a table.

• IPloneChatStorage interface

All storages modules must implements this interface. So it will be easy to add new storage possibilities.

see "/interfaces/PloneChat.py" for more informations

PLONECHAT PERF

You can define on PloneChat object these fields:

• the "refresh rate": a low refresh rate will increase the CPU load. A good refresh rate is 5 seconds;

• the "max message number": define how many messages you want to

  display inside the chat window. Higher is this value, slower is the chat. A good value for this field is 50. User could at any time see all the logs if necessary;

• the "only update": It will only get messages you still have not retrieved.

  Might not be really usefull with cache.

PloneChat and cache

caching the url "mychaturl/getModeratedMessages" will really increase the perfs for high traffic chats. Set the caching refresh rate to 5 seconds will send to zope 1 request every 5 seconds, when cache will send to users hundreds request.

If you are using cache, you will be able to set the refresh rate to 2 seconds.

PloneChat and RAMCache

For now, PloneChat can not use RAMCache, see "TO DO" section below.

PLONECHAT AND ZEO

If you are using zeo, you have to use the "sql" storage.

SECURITY

Moderation is based on Zope's roles, according to the following schema:

• 'Member' role gives user the permission to chat moderatedly
• 'Owner' role gives user the ability to chat unmoderatedly
• 'Reviewer' role gives user the ability to moderate a chat.

This is hard-coded but very easy to change. An interface similar to Plone's folder_localrole_form is provided so that it's easy to change roles.

IMPORTANT : It's impossible for the chat creator to assign the Reviewer role to himself. We changed this, however, to give a Reviewer local role at object instanciating, to give the possiblity for the object creator to be Moderator as well.

DATE FORMAT

When you use the SQL backend, the date format is as follow:

• %a Abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)
• %b Abbreviated month name (Jan..Dec)
• %c Month, numeric (0..12)
• %D Day of the month with English suffix (0th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, ...)
• %d Day of the month, numeric (00..31)
• %e Day of the month, numeric (0..31)
• %f Microseconds (000000..999999)
• %H Hour (00..23)
• %h Hour (01..12)
• %I Hour (01..12)
• %i Minutes, numeric (00..59)
• %j Day of year (001..366)
• %k Hour (0..23)
• %l Hour (1..12)
• %M Month name (January..December)
• %m Month, numeric (00..12)
• %p AM or PM
• %r Time, 12-hour (hh:mm:ss followed by AM or PM)
• %S Seconds (00..59)
• %s Seconds (00..59)
• %T Time, 24-hour (hh:mm:ss)
• %U Week (00..53), where Sunday is the first day of the week
• %u Week (00..53), where Monday is the first day of the week
• %V Week (01..53), where Sunday is the first day of the week; used with %X
• %v Week (01..53), where Monday is the first day of the week; used with %x
• %W Weekday name (Sunday..Saturday)
• %w Day of the week (0=Sunday..6=Saturday)
• %X Year for the week where Sunday is the first day of the week, numeric, four digits; used with %V
• %x Year for the week, where Monday is the first day of the week, numeric, four digits; used with %v
• %Y Year, numeric, four digits
• %y Year, numeric, two digits
• %% A literal %.

TO DO

• Add the possibility to cache getModeratedMessages in RAMCache -->

System Message: WARNING/2 (<string>, line 213)

Bullet list ends without a blank line; unexpected unindent.

create a py script;

• add the possibility for admin to limit the chat users number;

KNOWN BUGS

• Opera browser does not support PloneChat for now;
• Encoding problems on konqueror and IE;

[v2.2.1 - 2006-02-15] * Begining of portlet for listing chat users

[v2.2 - 2006-01-26]

• Fixed chat_storage bug after installation
• Can choose a SQLConnectorID in a combo box
• Refresh users and chat at the same time
• Improved UI + an optional tabbed display
• Enhanced moderation form
• Added an "Fetch only new messages" mode

[v2.1rc1 - 2005-09-23]

• Migrate to Archetypes 1.3.3
• Rewrite all unittests

CVS -

• Make Installation work with Plone 2.1
• During installation in Plone 2.1, there was an AttributeError: getDomainInfo, so the installMessageCatalog is no more called in Install.py now. 2005/07/28 MR
• edit form is now compatible with Plone 2.05 and 2.1. Using the here/calendar_slot/macros/calendarDatePickerBox | here/calendar_macros/macros/calendarDatePickerBox trick in the page template for backwards and forwards compatability 2005/07/28 MR

[v2.0 - 2004-03-23]

• Add clear feature to empty chat content

[v2.0Beta1 - 2004-01-06]

• Support for plone 2.0. Connected member frame.

[v0.4 - 2003-09-01]

• Support for plone 1.0.4

[v0.3 - 2003-05-14]

• UI fixes
• i18n management improvements

[v0.2 - 2003-03-31]

• Various improvements