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Ruby post to blogger

While working on my newest project http://iblog.deathbyescalator.com/blog_import I hit a bit of a problem while posting to blogger. I did complete the project. It now uploads to blogger and wordpress but the google calendar import does not work.

Back to the problem at hand.. I found a few sites that looked promising. So I installed the GData-0.0.4 gem with no luck.

So after looking at the gdata gem and the blogger api I build a quick script to post a blog entry to blogger.
Full script at http://svn.stephenbeckeriv.com/code/gdata/blogger/

But the good parts: Auth

module Net
  class HTTPS < HTTP
    def initialize(address, port = nil)
      super(address, port)
      self.use_ssl = true
    end
  end
end

GOOGLE_LOGIN_URL = URI.parse('https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin')
  
def get_gdata_headers(email,pass,service  = 'blogger',source =  'gdata-ruby' ,url = 'www.blogger.com')
  headers = {}
  response = Net::HTTPS.post_form(GOOGLE_LOGIN_URL,
      {'Email'   => email,
       'Passwd'  => pass,
       'source'  => source,
       'service' => service })
    raise "Not Authorized" unless response.kind_of? Net::HTTPSuccess
    headers['Content-Type'] = 'application/atom+xml'
    headers['Authorization'] = "GoogleLogin auth=#{response.body.split(/=/).last}"

  headers
end

I got the HTTPS class from the GData lib. I like the idea. This call does nothing but authenticate with the blogger service and produce the needed header hash for calls later. This same method can be used for all the google apis.

Posting to the right blog

def find_blog_by_url_from_xml(blog_url,xml)
  xml_of_blogs = REXML::Document.new(xml)
  
  blogs = xml_of_blogs.each_element("/*/entry"){|z| z}
  
  urls = blogs.map{|e|
    # the first link is the full url that people can use.
    e.each_element("link"){|mr| mr}[0].attributes["href"]
  }
  index = urls.index(urls.select{|u| u.include?(blog_url)}.first)
  blogs[index]
end

I have many blogs but want to post to just one of them. This method takes the body from a Http call i will show later. That call returns xml with all of the blog info. Links, author data, ids and other goodies. I do not think this is the best way to find the xml data I want. It is just one way that works.
Sending the post:

def post_xml_to_blog(base_url, headers, blog_url,post_array)
  conn = Net::HTTP.new(base_url, 80)
  # the http call that I was talking about..
  list_of_blogs = conn.get("/feeds/default/blogs",headers)
  
  blog_xml = find_blog_by_url_from_xml(blog_url,list_of_blogs.body)
  
  blog_links = blog_xml.each_element("link"){|mr| mr}
   
  post_url = blog_links.select{|e| e.attributes["href"] =~  BLOGGER_FEED_REGEX }.first.attributes["href"]
  
  post_path = post_url.match(BLOGGER_FEED_REGEX).to_s
  response = Array.new
  post_array.each{|entry|
    response << conn.post(post_path, build_atom_entry_xml(entry).to_s, headers)
  }
  response
end

Simple enough. I send in an array that has the hash of entries to create. I build these methods for my needs. These can be easily adapted and changed. Hopefully a fully supported GData lib will raise from some where and save me from my one off scripts.

Tags: world