I really like to use Deliverance for skinning Plone or any web application. In this post, i just want to help Deliverance beginners to configure their server, and to talk about PyQuery, which could be a good Deliverance companion.
Apache 2.2 + Deliverance : configuration
I spent some time to configure Apache in front of Deliverance, you will find here a possible configuration.
Deliverance Server configuration :
In your rules.xml, the first declaration relates to server config, use ’0.0.0.0′ as server address to be able to serve any ip address :
<server-settings>
<server>0.0.0.0:8000</server>
<execute-pyref>true</execute-pyref>
<display-local-files>false</display-local-files>
<dev-allow>
localhost
</dev-allow>
<dev-user username="dev" password="dev" />
<dev-expiration>60</dev-expiration>
</server-settings>
Always in rules.xml you need to write the proxy rule for Zope Virtual Host or another server.
If you want to serve a plone site located at http://localhost:8080/myplonesite :
<proxy path="/" rewrite-links="1">
<dest href="http://localhost:8080/VirtualHostBase/http/{SERVER_NAME}:8000/myplonesite/VirtualHostRoot" />
</proxy>
If you need a more complex configuration in front of Zope, you can always use Apache + Varnish or SQUID + Pound, or IIS + EEP, and ZEO in front of Zope using another port (90 in this example) and use this Deliverance proxy rule :
<proxy path="/ rewrite-links="1">
<dest href="http://{SERVER_NAME}:90" />
</proxy>
And if you want to serve anything else for another path :
<proxy path="/anotherpath" rewrite-links="1">
<dest href="http://anythingelse" />
</proxy>
Apache VirtualHost configuration
You can use Deliverance on port 80 (just replace 8000 by 80 in rules.xml) to directly serve your site, but you would prefer Apache for that in many cases.
Suppose you want to rewrite all requests to « www.mysite.org » with a Deliverance response (on www.mysite.org:8000), you can use the mod_rewrite like this :
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.mysite.org
ServerAlias mysite.org
ErrorLog "logs/error.mysite.org.log"
CustomLog "logs/access.mysite.org.log" combined
# do not forget this declaration
ProxyPreserveHost On
RewriteEngine On
RewriteLog "logs/rewrite.mysite.org.log"
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} ^(.*)
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://%{SERVER_NAME}:8000/$1 [P]
# etc ...
</VirtualHost>
That’s all.
If you want to serve urls starting with a particular path (/mypath), just change your rewrite rule like this :
RewriteRule ^/mypath(.*) http://%{SERVER_NAME}:8000/_vh_mypath$1 [P]
Just take care in this last case to put the good urls in your Deliverance static contents, if you need it .
In fact you can do anything you want with rewrite rules 
Deliverance and PyQuery
PyQuery is a jQuery-like library for Python which help you to play easily with html elements. Combined with Deliverance you will be able, with a python rule, to modify content or theme on the fly, at any point of your Deliverance transformation.
To learn how to add PyQuery rules to Deliverance, read this post (many thanks to Gaël who help me to learn Deliverance) :
http://www.gawel.org/weblog/en/2008/12/skinning-with-pyquery-and-deliverance
Read also :
http://www.openplans.org/projects/deliverance/lists/deliverance-discussion/archive/2008/12/1229591136002/forum_view
And now just try these example :
You have a floating right toolbar with floating right tabs inside in your html template theme :
<ul id="right-bar">
<li><a href="/abcd">ABCD</a></li>
<li><a href="/efgh">EFGH</a></li>
</ul>
You have a floating left toolbar with floating left tabs inside in your html source content :
<ul id="left-bar">
<li><a href="/abcd">ABCD</a></li>
<li><a href="/efgh">EFGH</a></li>
</ul>
With Deliverance xml rules you want to replace right tabs by left tabs like this :
<replace content="children:#left-bar" theme="children:#righ-bar" />
But of course you need to reverse tabs order before or after xml transformation.
To modify the theme just add a pyquery rule after the replace declaration :
<pyquery pyref="myskinproduct.rules:pqrules" />
In your rules.py, create your pqrules function like this :
def pqrules(content, theme, resource_fetcher, log) :
# if you prefer to work on content
# before Deliverance transform
# replace theme('#right-bar') by content('#left-bar')
nav = theme('#right-bar')
navitems = nav('li')
navitems.reverse()
# i'm not sure that it's needed :
nav.empty()
nav.append(navitems)
Other examples :
# replace a search button text with 'OK' in content
content('#portal-searchbox .searchButton').val('OK')
# remove icons from a navigation portlet
# replace icons by "> "
nav = content('#navigation')
navitems = nav('li')
navitems('img').remove()
navitems.append('<span>> </span>')
# add a "last-item" class to last tab in a toolbar
from pyquery import PyQuery as pq
navitems = content('#navbar li')
if navitems :
pq(navitems[len(navitems-1)]).addClass('last-item')
# if you have inserted external contents in content area with Deliverance xml rules
# you want to change a navitem class in result
if theme("#photos') :
selectNavigationItem('#photos')
#etc ...
To do this kind of template manipulations, changing content on source application could be a best practice, it depends of your particular situation.
But i’m sure that it’s a fast way 
The problem is how to test the result ? twill could be a solution …
Do not transform some contents with deliverance
If you dont like bad surprises, you need to abort ajax html content transformation. And in some other cases you need also to abort Deliverance transformation (see example)
In your rules.xml, just add :
<match pyref="myproduct.rules:match_notheme" abort="1" />
and in your rules.py
def match_notheme(req, resp, headers, *args):
match = False
if req.headers.get('X-Requested-With', '').startswith('XML'):
match = True
# the html template of FCKEditor iframe must be unchanged
if req.path_info.startswith('/editor'):
match = True
if 'notheme' in req.GET:
match = True
return match
