Displaying a Random Quote

by paulbhartzog — last modified Dec 30, 2008 03:01 PM
How to display a random quote on a Plone page.

A lot of people keep asking me about the random quote generator on http://www.panarchy.com so here it is:

  1. put this python script named "getQuote" in a folder named "quotes" in the root of your site: 
    import string
from random import choice
all_quotes = string.split(context.quotes.quotes_file.data,"\n")
all_quotes.pop()
quote = choice(all_quotes)
fields = string.split(quote,"     ")
item_template = """<div style="text-align:left;margin: 15px;">
   <span class="quote">"%s"</span>
   <p class="cite">—%s</p>
   </div>
   """
print item_template % (fields[1],fields[0])
return printed
  2. in the same place put a File named "quotes_file" that looks like this: 
    John Perry Barlow     Chaos becomes opportunity.
Author     quote
    NOTE: I'm using 5 spaces as a separator; you can use anything you want.
  3. call it from main_template like this: 
    <div class="randquote" tal:content="structure here/quotes/getQuote">
</div>
  4. tweak your CSS; mine looks like this: 
    .randquote {
   border: solid 1px &dtml-globalBorderColor;;
   background-color: &dtml-globalBackgroundColor;;
   padding: 0 1em;
   margin: 2em 2em 0em 2em;
}
.quote {
   font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
}
.cite {
   text-align: right;
   margin-bottom: 0px;
   font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
}

that's it.

Thanks to Jeremy, and the folks on the Plone list for help.

-Paul