blogger (google) API

blogger (google) API

Poster

Poster es un addons for FireFox created by Alex Milowski which is very usefull, when experimenting with atom feeds. Poster allows to compose her/his own hand-crafted get or post http command. Since these commands are the way to communicate with atom blogs in a restful manner, Poster is a very nice sandbox to try, err and finally find.

Alternatives contain curl, html forms, xhtml xforms. None is so satisfactory as Poster.

In Poster, there are separate fields for:
- URL
- File selection or Content editor directly from the addon
- Content type definition (put "application/xml+atom" for atom feeds)
- User and Pass (with option of Google Login, for blogger)

All these parts are gathered in one of the following http command :
- GET
- POST
- PUT
- DELETE
- HEAD
- OPTIONS
- PROFIND
- COPY
- MOVE

Additional functions include (I don't know yet how to use them):
- Headers
- Parameters
- Parameter body
- Encode

The configuration can be saved, imported, stored

Finally, when the command is send, another window opens with the result of the command, received from the server. Very neat.

screen shots of ScribeFire configuration assistent

ScribeFire panel is very easy to use. If the browser window isn't large enough to see all the icons of the specific toolbar, just select the tool from the triangle which ends the toolbar.

With the "picture" tool it is easy to upload images selected from one's filesystem or from the web. The user can choose FTP or blog API as a protocol. Blog API worked fine for me and was the right option, since I hadn't configured any FTP access.

The uploaded images are represented in the body of the blog entry. They may be  deleted in the same way as one deletes any character of the text, by using the "delete" key. There may be as many images within an entry as one likes.

Hereafter, I copied the images of my configuración of FireScribe in order it to connect to this blog.

firefox ScribeFire Blog Editor 3.1.6

some Firefox's addons make it posible to control one's blog (creation, edition, indexing,...).
ScribeFire, which version 3.1.6 was published on 2008-12-18, worked out of the box without a glitch. This hasn't been the case yet with "Atomic", another Firefox addons that I tried.

ScribeFire displays an account wizard the first time it opens. I used the wizard. Unfortunately, the wizard wasn't that wise with my Google Blogspot, since I couldn't beneficiate of an automatic discovery of the configuration and had to pass through various steps manually.

ScribeFire had some wisdom thought, because it tought me the form of the URL which correspond to a blogspot:
"http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full".
I knew the service.post url of my blog is:
"http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8185867057371735659/posts/default". So I mixed up both in a new URL:"http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8185867057371735659/posts/full". I guessed there were no advanced configuration. And that was it.

I wrote, and later edited, this entry from ScribeFire as a test proof. It works :-)

In a next post, I will try "tag categorization" of the posts, "image uploads" and "timestamp" functionalities made available by ScribeFire.

atom feed, rest API, eXist database

I am new to the atom feed technology.
But it already sounds like that, together with rest API and xml eXist database, "atom feeds" provide a very interesting constellation for the developpment of web services with small persistent information.
This blog will keep tracks of what I find and test.