Question

I have a class and portal_type Person and there are 2 methods in it:

class Person(BaseContent):
    def print_all(self):
        catalog = getToolByName(self, "portal_catalog")
        results = catalog(portal_type = 'Person')
        final_result = ''
        for result in results:
            final_result += result.getObject().print_person()
        return final_result

    def print_person(self):
        return self.name

But I realised that print_all is not associated with any object so it should be static method. What I want to do is get all the instances of the person and call print_person(). But the problem is: what should I write in the catalog since there is no self object after I make the print_all method static method. For instance now I cannot write

catalog = getToolByName(self, "portal_catalog")

I want something like:

@staticmethod
def print_all():
    instance = Person()
    catalog = getToolByName(instance, "portal_catalog")
    .
    .
    .

But it is giving me 'invalid syntax' error at instance = Person()! I hope my question is clear and any help will be appreciated!

Answer 1

You can replace self with context, like this:

# this is needed only if you don't have a context to pass
from zope.app.component import hooks

def print_all(context=None):
    if context is None:
        context = hooks.getSite()
    catalog = getToolByName(context, "portal_catalog")
    results = catalog(portal_type = 'Person')
    final_result = ''
    for result in results:
        final_result += result.getObject().print_person()
    return final_result