Preview changes and protect a site

Preview changes and protect a site#

This guide shows you how to see what a script or command would change before it changes anything, and how to make a client unable to change a site at all.

Preview the changes of a script#

Create the client with dry_run=True. Reads still go to the site, so the script behaves as usual, but each changing request is recorded in client.dry_run_log instead of being sent.

client = PloneClient.from_env(dry_run=True)
client.content.update("/news/hello", title="Hello, Plone")

for request in client.dry_run_log:
    print(request["method"], request["url"], request.get("json"))

Each skipped call returns the record of the request instead of the site’s answer. A create therefore returns no @id; stop before any step that needs one.

A common pattern is to plan by default and change the site only when asked.

client = PloneClient.from_env(dry_run=not args.apply)

Preview the changes of a command#

Pass -n anywhere on the command line. The command prints the requests it would send, and sends none of them.

plone-client -n delete /news/hello
plone-client update /news/hello --title "Hello, Plone" -n

With -n, destructive commands do not ask for confirmation.

Refuse every change#

Create the client with read_only=True. Any request that could change the site raises PloneReadOnlyError before it is sent.

client = PloneClient.from_profile("production", read_only=True)

On the command line, pass --read-only before the command, or create the profile with --read-only so it always refuses changes.

plone-client --read-only -p production ls /news
plone-client profile add production --url https://example.org --username editor --read-only

Searches through @querystring-search and logins still work, because those services answer a POST without changing anything.

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