Post to Pivot from a Desktop App

[mngeoff]

*** MetaWeblog support is now part of the default Pivot installation - read more in the docs. ***

Here is a preliminary PHP script that lets you post to pivot from metaWeblog-compatible applications (I use ecto, but there are several others).

If you want to try it out, download the script from http://www.rocksandpaper.com/metaweblog.zip, then drop the metaweblog.php file in your /pivot folder.

Once you've done that, you can point your blogging app at the new file (with a category name as your "Blog ID") and post away. It also works with Flickr's blogging system.

This file is modified from myPhpBlog's api.php, so it's GPL-licensed.

Let me know if it works (or doesn't work) for you...

Edited by hansfn - added top text (in bold/centered).

[Tenshi]

I tried your script with Flickr's blogging functionality and it seems to work great! Except for one small thing... my frontpage isn't rebuild, after the entry is posted.
The entry shows up okay in the entries overview.

It seems the frontpage is actually rebuild but too early, just before the entry is added to the db. Cause when I do another post from Flickr, the previous entry does show up on the frontpage, but the new one does not.

[Bob (too lazy to log in)]

Making pivot rebuild the frontpage isn't too hard.. I'm at my parents'house right now, so i don't have easy access to the code, but if you want to know how to make it rebuild, lit should be sufficient to call

buildfrontpage_function();

(if it doesn't work that easily, i'll take a closer look )

[madjo]

[mngeoff]

I'll have to try Bob's suggestion. Right now it uses this to rebuild (which I'm sure I copied from somewhere in the Pivot code):

[mngeoff]

buildfrontpage_function() does rebuild the front page properly, but it breaks the XML response.

It writes this to the beginning of the output:

[Bob]

buildfrontpage_function() probably writes output to the 'browser', which you do not want.

It's not the tidiest way to do it, but you can solve this by wrapping it like this:

[Bob]

I've been testing a bit with w.bloggar to see how it works, and posting works fine, but it complains when i try to get a list of the latest posts..

Could this be an issue with w.bloggar, or of me setting it up incorrectly? (i'm using metaWeblog Api instead of blogger api.. that's correct, right?)

[Bob]

I've come a bit farther.. I set it up here: http://mijnkopthee.nl/pivot/metaweblog.php. Using Ecto, one category works:

http://mijnkopthee.nl/images/ecto_ok.gif

and one doesn't:

http://mijnkopthee.nl/images/ecto_notok.gif

As ecto suggests, There's probably something wrong with the encoding of the xml response. Is there a way I could check the raw xml metaweblog.php returns?

[stefanbucher]

I just came by to see what the Pivot forum will tell me about using ecto and was surprised to see this recent discussion.

I think it's great to make Pivot work with a desktop application like ecto by means of metaweblog.php.

But: Can I be sure that ecto won't do any harm to my Pivot installation and settings on my webserver?

And: Which one is the latest development of metaweblog.php now?

Thank you for the good work.

[mngeoff]

Sorry for taking so long to reply. I've been away from my computer most of the weekend.

Bob:

I think Ecto has a "Console" option somewhere that will show you the XML -- maybe on the "tools" menu? I'll have to look when I get back to my own PC.

stefanbucher: metaweblog.php doesn't change any pivot settings, so it won't hurt your pivot installation. I always keep the latest version at http://www.rocksandpaper.com/metaweblog.zip

-----

The errors with the recent post listings seem to be related to problems with the UTF8 encoding. I suspect that the errors happen when it tries to get posts with certain non-english characters. Can somebody who is having trouble tell me if the new version fixes the problem?

For the problems with page-rebuilding, I'm not sure why that's happening yet. The page-rebuilding code that I'm using is actually copied directly from buildfrontpage_function(), but for some reason it isn't always "seeing" the new one. Is there some kind of delay between writing an entry and being able to read it?

[Update: OK, I think I found the problem w/ page rebuilding -- I need to be using the generate_pages($id) function (this seems to be what pivot does when you create an entry from the control panel) Should be fixed now.]

[Bob]

Nope, this version of the metaweblog script doesn't fix it yet.

w.bloggar gives another error on almost every action i do: "The categoy functions aren't supported. Specify your category under Blog ID".

I haven't the foggiest idea what that means.

Also, my ecto (1.6, the latest one for windows i believe), doesn't seem to have a console.

[timsamoff]

I've installed Metaweblog.php, but I am getting an error when I try to set up my Flickr blog:

[mngeoff]

[timsamoff]

I pointed to where I put the metaweblog file (and where the ReadMe says to):
http://www.sense-datum.org/pivot/metaweblog.php

-T.