zodbbrowser

zodbbrowser allows you to inspect persistent objects stored in the ZODB, view their attributes and historical changes made to them.

Usage as a standalone project

Install all the dependencies into the source tree with zc.buildout:

python bootstrap.py
bin/buildout

Run bin/zodbbrowser specifying either a filename or a ZEO address

bin/zodbbrowser /path/to/Data.fs
bin/zodbbrowser --zeo localhost:9080
bin/zodbbrowser --zeo /path/to/zeosock

If you don't have a spare Data.fs to test with, you can create a new empty one with just the barest Zope 3 scaffolding in it:

bin/zodbbrowser empty.fs --rw

Open http://localhost:8070 in a web browser. Note that there are no access controls; all other users on the local machine will be able to access the database contents.

Or you could try to use easy_install. It may work or it may not, depending on the current state of all the dependencies (buildout.cfg hardcodes dependency version to a known-working-together state, called the "Zope 3.4 Known Good Set", so buildout-based installs are safer)

easy_install zodbbrowser
zodbbrowser /path/to/Data.fs

Command-line options

Run bin/zodbbrowser --help to see a full and up-to-date list of command-line options:

Usage: zodbbrowser [options] [FILENAME | --zeo ADDRESS]

Open a ZODB database and start a web-based browser app.

Options:
  -h, --help        show this help message and exit
  --zeo=ADDRESS     connect to ZEO server instead
  --listen=ADDRESS  specify port (or host:port) to listen on
  --rw              open the database read-write (allows creation of the
                    standard Zope local utilities if missing)

Online help

There's a little 'help' link in the bottom-right corner of every page that describes the user interface in greater detail.

Usage as a plugin

Add zodbbrowser to the list of eggs (e.g. in buildout.cfg of your app) and add this to your site.zcml:

< include package="zodbbrowser" / >

Rerun bin/buildout, restart Zope and append @@zodbbrowser to the end of the URL to start browsing, e.g. http://localhost:8080/@@zodbbrowser. Or, if you still use ZMI (the Zope Management Interface), look for a new menu item titled "ZODB Browser".

Alternatives

There's a package called z3c.zodbbrowser in the Zope svn repository that implements the same idea (but without history browsing) as a GUI desktop application written using wxPython. It doesn't have a website and was never released to the Python Package Index.

There's also dm.historical which provides access to object history from an interactive Python shell.

If you're not interested in history or objects that cannot be reached through URL traversal, you can use the built-in object inspector that comes with Zope 3 / Grok.

What is new in this release:

• Dropped Python 2.4 and 2.5 support.
• Migrated source from Launchpad to Github.
• Custom representation of OOBucket objects.
• Slightly better error pages when you specify an invalid/nonexistent OID.
• Handle OrderedContainers with non-persistent _order or _data attributes (I've seen the first in the wild).
• Partial fix for LP#1185175: cannot browse objects of classes that use zope.interface.implementsOnly.

What is new in version 0.10.4:

• The previous release was completely broken (LP#1091716). Fix the issue, and fix tox.ini to actually run functional tests in addition to unit tests.

What is new in version 0.10.3:

• Custom representation of persistent objects with no __repr__ to avoid showing misleading memory addresses (LP#1087138).

What is new in version 0.10.2:

• Bugfix for POSKeyErrors when viewing BTrees of non-trivial sizes (LP#953480). This fixes a regression introduced in version 0.10.0.

What is new in version 0.10.0:

• Browsing of transaction records (@@zodb_history). Initial implementation so far, unbelievably slow when you have large databases (LP#907900).
• ZODB Browser now avoids writing to the database even in read-write mode. Previously when your objects had write-on-read semantics, those writes might have snuck in.
• More descriptive page titles (LP#931115).
• Show object size in the header (LP#497780).
• Expand truncated values by clicking on them (LP#931184).
• More user-friendly representation of multiline text values.
• Update maintainer email in setup.py.
• Better error message for "address already in use" errors.

What is new in version 0.9.0:

• Make it possible to use zodbbrowser as a plugin for Zope 2.12. Previously you could only use the standalone zodbbrowser app with Zope 2.12 databases.
• Be more robust against exceptions happening in repr(): show the value as "" instead of erroring out.
• Make 'python -m zodbbrowser' run the standalone app on Python 2.5 and 2.7. Note that 'python -m zodbbrowser.standalone' already worked on Python 2.4 through 2.7.
• Add an option to specify ZEO storage name (--storage NAME). Contributed by Thierry Florac.

Requirements:

• Python