schooltool-developers team mailing list archive

[Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>]

Perhaps the rest of you have an opinion on this.

--Tom


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Douglas Cerna <douglascerna@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 8:58 AM
Subject: Validation questions
To: Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>


Tom:

I'm adding validation to my email work and I have some questions:

Since the email configuration is optional, all the fields added to the
IApplicationPreferences interface (smtpHostname, smtpPort,
stmpUsername, smtpPassword, smtpTLS) are set as "required=False" (look
at the attached screenshot).

This allows all those fields to be sent empty and get no validation
error (for example, when you're only setting the school name). But,
what happens if the user sets only the hostname (mail.example.com)?
Should we then require a port, username and password?

zope.sendmail makes all the values optional and assumes localhost for
empty hostname, 25 for empty port, and None's for empty username,
password and tls.

Should I allow the user only to specify the port and not a hostname?
Or the username without no password? And talking about passwords, the
zope.schema.Password field has a weird functionality. Suppose you fill
in all the five values. When you come back later to the form, the
password is not displayed (security I guess). That could make the user
think that there's no password at all.

Also, should I add a password confirmation field? I'm starting to
think that all these configurations should be move outside the
Application Preferences area, maybe to the "schooltool.email"
container, where you can delete and retry sending stuck emails. For
the password, I'm starting to see it like the Person password, like a
"Change Password" option.

As usual, I'm feeling I'm not being clear :/ I'll try to stay
connected today and maybe we can chat about it if you have time.

Thanks, Douglas

"... allí­ es cuando te das cuenta que las cosas malas pueden resultar
bastante buenas..." - Lionel Messi

Por favor, evite enviarme adjuntos de Word, Excel o PowerPoint.
Vea http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.es.html

Attachment: email_preferences.png
Description: PNG image